Frigid
by PragmaticHominid
Summary: When King Cold and his sons disappeared on Earth, no one in the Empire dared to investigate, for fear of provoking the monster who had destroyed them. Decades later, the last member of Cold's family - dying and with nothing to lose - means to learn more.
1. Chapter One: Frigid

_"We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchangeable true facts that apply to every human being on this planet." __- William Boyd_

**Frigid**

The Super Saiyajin created an unfathomable mess, and then he simply faded away. He disappeared into obscurity as quickly as he had come, leaving the rest of the universe to wonder over what might have happened on Nameksei. Fictions and legends and bedtime stories were spun around the events that had taken place on that muddy wasteland of a planet, though there were few left alive who could speak with any authority on the matter. Only two people could have known what really occurred; Furiza was half of the pair, but in the year between the destruction of Nameksei and his death my brother spoke very little on the topic, and only in the vaguest of terms. The balance of what he did reveal was almost certainly pure invention.

When that business with the Saiyajin came to its unpredicted head on Nameksei, one might have hoped that humiliation and infirmary would teach my brother some small measure of common sense. Instead, the failure – no less than spent alone in the black void where the planet had been – drove from him what little restraint he'd had before. He was completely unmanageable after that, jittery and brittle in a way that I understood far better than I would have wished. By that point Cold was himself running scared, though he hid it better than Furiza. They imagined threats where there were none, and took the most extreme to quash them.

It was as much for fear's sake as pride that he and Father went to Earth to make a final end to the Saiyajin race. When they failed to return Koola followed after, only to disappear himself.

I didn't repeat Koola's mistake, though I felt some trepidation that a creature capable of killing even the most powerful Icejin might still lurk somewhere at the edge of the Empire. Not even Furiza and Cold together could not put the Super Saiyajin down; I wasn't foolish enough to hold ambitions of success where my betters had failed so profoundly. I put the matter out of my mind inasmuch as I could, and hoped that the Super Saiyajin would not come looking for further victims, or that if he did that he might be somehow appeased.

My family had given me little reason to mourn them, but the months following Koola's death were a dangerous time for me. Furiza had left no clear successor for his holdings – that one acted as though he expected to live forever – and though Koola had stepped into Furiza's place without challenge, he was gone almost as quickly.

There few truly fearsome creatures left in the known universe by then – after his shock on Nameksei, Furiza was driven to remove even the most unlikely of possible threats – but if enough races had decided to turn against me as one things might have gotten precarious. My biggest difficulties came from those who failed to understand that power was often measured on a sliding scaled, and presumed that because they were considered very fine by the standards of their species, and I poor by those of my own, they could overpower me. It was necessary to make a certain number of examples, but not as many as I might have expected. In this, Frost was instrumental to my success.

Frost.

Frost was… abnormal. There are those who said – with good reason, I suppose – that my race is incapable of feeling anything approaching love, but I am certain that I do not delude myself when I say that he loved me. Expectations didn't run as high in his family, yet by any measure Frost was scandalously weak. Had they dared try it, the lowliest of Cold's royal guard might have killed him without much effort, and yet somehow this weakness seemed to instill in him a sort of invulnerability. Well aware of his helplessness, he did not allow fear of death to rule him. He studied the emotions of others, and anticipating the actions and moods others with perfect skill, and, gauging each shifting current, he defused the most perilous of situations.

It was Frost's sense for the feelings of others that kept him alive, and yet it was a two-sided blade. To see suffering – to even be aware of its existence – hurt him deeply, but always he turned that pain inward, against himself, and this was something I found both confusing and intensely frustrating. It was his complete unwillingness to harm that made it so difficult for me to take any course of action that would cause him harm, even vicariously, and which made me wish to lessen the burden of guilt he took upon himself for all our race. Though when the Empire fell to me, I refused to allow his sentimentality to have an injudicious influence on my decisions, when there was no risk or great loss in it I let him have his way.

It was Frost's machinations that kept the transition from Koola's rule to my own relatively bloodless. He had a sort of sense for other creatures – even the most barbaric or repulsive of species – that I lacked completely. Often he could make it seem almost as though there was some common ground between us and them. He could guess at what concessions or threats would quiet unruly races with an eerie precession, and had a talent for finding surprising uses for species that I would have dismissed as entirely worthless. Gone are the days when powerful and feral infants were sent off to every available planet, to conquer as they took their growth, wastefully striping the planet of much of its natural and technological resources in the process, along with perfectly useful labor bases. Everything is much neater and better organized now, and in the rare cases that it came to be that a planet must be depopulated it was done quickly and with the least possible amount of discomfort for the species in question. It wasn't enough for Frost, but he took what I could give him gracefully. He would take an interest in the planet slated for conquest, and point out those cases where the spoils could not justify the expense. Many unique but valueless biospheres were set in reserve at his urging. He had a bad tendency to collect useless and infuriating pets, skimmed from doomed planets.

For both our safety, I refused to allow anything open between Frost and myself until all were convinced that Cold and my brothers were good and forever and completely gone. Icejin do not die easily. In the absence of corpses, it was hard to credit reports that Cold and his favorite son had been slaughtered on some backwards little blue rock, and by no less than the legendary Super Saiyajin. It was especially hard to make certain about Koola, whose death seemed to have been tainted with some bizarre and inexplicable mysticism.

No such ambiguity surrounded Frost's death. I found him three nights past. Before, he'd been nearly as large as my father, but the disease had worn away at him, melting him down to naught but a taunt skin over sharp-pointed bone. The same illness eats at me, paining my chest and sapping my energy. Frost clung to life to the very end, but I'm not so brave as he. I do not wish to suffer as he did, nor do I have the courage to wait patiently on death. I'm a coward and I'm terrified, and if I knew of any way that was guaranteed to be successful I would have taken my own life already. As I said, death is rarely easy or quick for an Icejin, and for the longest time I could imagine no sure way to make an end of myself.

The answer came to me some hours after our guards had taken the body away.

Three of the most powerful Icejin to ever live, beings fit to subjugate the entire universe, found their deaths on the same backwater little planet, and all at the hands of the same brute. If it means a quick and certain death I can suffer the indignity of dying under the paws of such a creature. I imagine it will take little to provoke him into performing for me this service.

So I'll go to Earth, and I'll die there, and my task now is to simply maintain my composure for the interim.

Uragiru and Aiken were asleep in their quarters, or perhaps they were awake also. I have cautioned them that they must rest tonight, but some orders are impossible to follow. Aiken was mine. She was Inujin and thus loyal to her core, and such is her nature that she will die once I am gone. Uragiru was Frost's, and of little interest to me.

I should try to rest as well, but I cannot imagine returning to our quarters. Instead, I sit in this great, stupid throne, an overdone thing built to Cold's dimensions. Regardless, my lungs ache too badly tonight to consider rest. And I'm so frighten. It is possible that the Saiyajin may by now be dead himself, or weaken by age. What hope is there for me then?

I cannot allow myself to dwell on such ideas.

Any small sound will bring Aiken running to my side, dumb, loyal child that she is. It's only her breeding, and yet when I think of how the fool loves me I am at a lose to understand it. I would like to have her near me now, but no. Not tonight. She should be allowed to rest; we all must be at our best tomorrow.

I will be like Frost. I will be brave, and I will be calm, and I will not be afraid to die. I will make my choices and be content with them. I will.

I will.

My hand finds the com button. The voice that summons Aiken is weak, and unsteady, and so very, very scared.


	2. Chapter Two: Aiken

_"An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness." - Elbert Hubbard_

**Aiken**

My Mistress slept uneasily on her throne, her back against one of its great arms. It had been Cold's before her, and with her legs drawn up to her chest and her tail curled in three coils around her ankles, she took up only a small part of the available space.

She'd meant to get rid of the it long ago, but Frost hadn't thought that was a good idea. "It's important that you should dissociate yourself from the others," he told her, in the days after Koola's assassination. "But only to a certain extent. The chair sends its own message."

"Yes. The thing says that I lack the sense – or else the funds - to get something more suitable and less ostentatious," my Mistress had said, but went on to add, "Tell me."

"'Could be worse,'" he said, and cringed in sympathy with her.

"What a bloody mess this all is," she said. But the throne stayed, for Frost was nearly always right about that sort of things, and my Mistress knew it.

But she did sleep, though uneasy, and do you know why?

Because I'm here, was why, and nothing that could be fought was ever going to lay a finger on her as long as I could fight it. Nothing and no one ever gets past me, and they never will. Without Frost, I was the only one here to look after her. When we got to Earth and found the Saiyajin who dared to raise his fists against my Mistress's family, I meant to put the stupid ape down for her right off.

I stood on the left hand side of her throne, keeping watch as I'm meant to. I've been my Mistress's since I was just a small thing, since even before she knew it, for Frost got me for her as a gift. She stirred, her head rolling to her shoulder, and I laid back my ears and held my breath, hope, hope, hoping that she would stay asleep. She did.

The doors hissed open, and Uragiru stepped into the throne room. It caught me by surprise, her coming, and I wanted to growl, but the sound died in my throat and slid down to my belly when I thought of what my Mistress would think if she heard me do that. My Mistress said that I must act civilized and respectable at all times, and not make a vexation out of myself, or she won't keep me. That's what she said. If she heard me growl at Uragiru she'd be angry.

Uragiru never paid proper attention to what was going on around her, and that's why she didn't see me at first. She had some bauble in her hand, a shiny bit of black stone, but when I stepped forward she slipped it into a pocket on the inside of her armor. She watched me like she thought I'd try to take the dumb thing from her, but I don't have any interest in any of the shiny junk she collected.

Uragiru looked ready to say something, but I held a claw up to my mouth, watching my Mistress out of the corner of my eye. I didn't want her woken up. She needed more rest than she's been getting. She never sleeps enough, and doesn't eat good either, and that's why she's sick so often. She'd get better if she ate.

Waving at Uragiru to follow, I padded quietly across the throne room floor and through the automatic double doors. She followed; I could tell she didn't like, but I don't care about that. I won't have my Mistress bothered.

When we were alone in the hall, Uragiru said to me, "We'll make landfall soon. Wake her."

"Already?" I said, the tips of my ears drooping. "She's hardly slept!"

Uragiru shrugged as though it wasn't any concern of hers, but watched me sly-eyed. "She'll be angry with you if you don't." She was tall but fine-boned, and her skin was a powder blue. Her long cyan-colored hair, which she scented with flowery perfumes that made my nose itch, was tied behind her shoulders. Uragiru thought herself strong because she understood about energy attacks, but I bet I could tear out that thin throat before she knew what was what. Lord Furiza used to keep a male of the same race. That one wasn't any good, either; he allowed his Master to come to harm.

I looked back at the closed doors nervously. My tongue darted out and flicked across my nose before I could stop it. I didn't want her to be mad. "What's the hurry?"

"By now the Saiyajin will know we're coming. She will want time to prepare herself." She smiles when I don't say anything to that. Fake smile. Liar, with a fake smile.

"They're primitives," I argued. "No scouters. He can't know yet."

The sneaky little shrug again. Uragiru always makes a great show of indifference to everything, and her shifty eyes always tell the facts plainer. "Have it your way. I don't imagine it'll make any difference."

"What's that mean?" I asked, listening close for sounds behind the door, hoping my Mistress would come awake and hear. Uragiru didn't say anything else, so I told her, "Lady Frigid is going to see that Saiyajin dead." My shoulders bristled under the pads of my armor and I held my tail high and stiff in challenge. "That's why we're going. She said."

"The strongest beings in the universe have broken themselves against the Super Saiyajin's power," Uragiru told me. "How is it that you think she'll do any better?"

"I'll kill him," I said, my lips skinning back from my jaws. "I'll kill him before he can touch her. Me. I'll kill him good and dead."

She had no answer for that. She turned her back on me and walked away, disappearing around a curve in the tight hallway. The desire to give chase was almost uncontrollable.

Lord Frost liked Uragiru, but I don't. She never loved either of them.

This is how I'll know the Saiyajin from the natives; Saiyajin have tails, though theirs are dark-furred, wormy little things, not nice and bushy like my own. All I have to do is kill the one with the tail, and there won't be any more trouble.

My own tail hung low as I slinked back into my Mistress's throne room.

As I made my way across the plush purple carpets of the throne-room, the soles of my boots leave prints in the shag that faded quickly away. I would go barefoot, but my Mistress doesn't like it. Most of the time I kept the claws on my feet clipped, to keep them from pitching against the insides of my boots, but when I found out where we're going I stopped that. In a fight the claws on my feet could be as good as the ones on my hands, and I want them just as sharp as they can get. If the Saiyajin is short like Prince Vegeta was, one good kick might send his guts tumbling into the dirt.

The scent of blood stopped me at the foot of her throne. I looked up at my Mistress, my brain icy with fear, and saw more than I'd seen before. There'd been no sound, but while I was gone – I ought not to have left – something had happened. There was a bluish tint to her ivory skin, especially around her dark lips. That skin looked as thin and brittle as wax paper, and I wondered now it was that the so-easy-to-see bones didn't break free when she moved. My Mistress had never looked fearsome – it was a tricksy fact about Icejin that even the most powerful among their numbers do not often look it, and the missestimations this has caused has brought surprise death to many - but this is something entirely new. She's not just sickly, not just frail. She looks bad. Worst then Frost did on the night that Frost died, and I was suddenly sure that she was dying, right here in front of me.

Her eyes were closed, but she was awake. Her face was rigid with the effort to turn pain to her will. There was blood on her lower lip, as bright and red as my own.

I'm scared. I shouldn't be seeing her like this.

"Lady Frigid?" I said, and the squeak in my voice was like an orphaned pup's whine. She didn't answer, but the grimace tightening as she clenched her fine jaw. I knew that I shouldn't speak, but I did. My tongue was stupid and stiff with fear as I said, "Uragiru says we're almost there..." and I wondered if I'd spoken clearly enough for her to understand me.

The pain left her suddenly, or else she put it away deliberately. She startled when she realized that she was being watched, but even as this realization was dawning her face became blank as ice. She straightened in one quick and flowing movement, her almond-shaped eyes open and completely flat. Her frown was a thin, dark line, the red of the blood brilliant against the white flesh. I had never seen her look so like Furiza, and it sent my guts twisting. I've shamed her - I never meant to - and she was angry with me, and I don't have the cleverness to fix things. If Frost where here, he'd know what to say - he would remind her of my limitations and good intentions, and she'd forgive my stupidity -

But Frost died. He died three days ago. He's hidden away in the cold and dark of the ship's morgue, and he can't help her anymore.

When she stepped down the stairs leading down from her throne, her tail lashing behind her, I was certain that she would strike me, though she never had before. I howled and cringed away, staggering backwards as though already hurt. Head bowed down to my belly, hands over my face, I watch the pale legs float past me, the tip of the swaying tail brushing against me as though I were not there. The white flesh was dry and rigid, more like rawhide then living skin, and smooth and hard as a polished stone. She would never have touched me if she were herself.

My Mistress approached the mirror that hung above the fountain at the far end of the throne room. She cocked her head to study the lower half of her face, and I watched her in the reflection. Her expression was distant and bored, and again I remember her brother. Furiza was mad because there was no one who could stop him being mad. Without Frost to bridge the gap between herself and all the universe's poorer, weaker creatures, what will happen to my Mistress?

She dipped her finger tips into the water to wet them, then brought them to her face and rubbed pensively at the drying blood. When she lowered her fingers into the water again, the thing that lives in the fountain wrapped its tentacles around her wrist. She shook it off, vexed yet careful not to break it. It was one of Frost's pets, and I wondered if anyone's fed it since he left. She rubbed the last of the blood away, dips her fingers once again to clean them, flicking the beads of water back into the fountain before turning away.

It was, I think, only then that she remembered me. The look she gave me was long and inscrutable, and my ears dropped shamefully under it, even as my tail began a tentative wag. "Aiken," she said, "Come," and I followed her out of the throne room gladly.


	3. Chapter Three: Frigid

_"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying." - Jean Cocteau_

**Frigid**

I had no particular argument with the natives of this planet, no purpose or need for them or anything that is theirs, and no wish to become involved with their business. The people here were remarkably similar to the Saiyajin in physique, and I saw no reason to believe that this similarity was only skin deep. Weak though they were, if they have the same yen for irrational violence that was that so nearly dead race's trademark, it would be best to avoid engaging them. For this reason, I saw to it that my ship was taken down in a secluded place. Given a week's time, Aiken could decimate every major city on the planet - and would do so gleefully, only to please me; such is the beauty of the Inujin race - but better to avoid the distraction. I'll turn her loose if it's necessary to capture the Super Saiyajin's attention, but I did believe that he would come to me without prompting.

My vessel was spherical, without projections or sharp corners, and dotted by small port windows. A larger window takes up the half of the far wall of my throne room, ovoid in shape and tinted a deep purple. It was through this window that I watched as Uragiru brought the ship down, the struts coming out to support the ship as it touched down. The dust cleare gradually, and the view through the window became one of a vast and dry wilderness. It spread before me, naught but dead, sand-covered plains and improbable crags topped by shucks of withered brown grass. Ugly planet, really. So drab. Small, four-legged lizards in mottled green and brown scales crawl on their bellies among the broken stone. Distant cousins, perhaps. "Aiken," I said, watching life, such as it is for these creatures, go on outside the walls of my ship. "Fetch me one of those." I pointed to the one I wanted casually, knowing for a certainty that Aiken would bring me that very one. Pale-skinned, it was more tail than body. It blinked its round eyes placidly, as yet unaware that it had been singled out.

Aiken was wound up – spoiling for a fight, the fool child. She sprung from my throne room gladly, all her confidence plain in the stiffness of her spine and the high height at which she held her tail. I wondered if the silly fool had any idea as to what was in store for us. It's unheard of for an Inujin to outlive its master, and I will die, regardless of whether or not the Saiyajin came. Had I had any inkling of things to come when Frost made a gift of her to me all those years ago, when Aiken was only half-grown and apt to tremble whenever I cast eyes upon her, I would have refused. Had I any confidence in my ability to do so neatly, I would have put her down myself. Another chore for the Saiyajin – I don't imagine that he'll be unwilling.

I watched Aiken through the window as she moved toward the lizard, stalking it with skill and instinct equal to any wild thing. I cannot fathom the thoughts of such a thoughtless creature. She grinned while she climbed over the rocks, and her tongue dangled over robust fangs. Her tail wagged madly, but then it froze, and her entire body froze with it, for she was now very close to the lizard. The pounce was imminent, a flash of alloy-tipped claws that would gleam in the too-bright sun, but I didn't see it.

My throat seized, and I turned from the window, stricken. My hand clutched at my throat uselessly. The other hand reached out, as though of its own accord, looking for something to catch hold of. It seemed very important that I should sit down, but the throne room was suddenly cavernous, the throne and the communicator next to it at an impossible distance, and between there and here there was nothing but empty space. I was trying very hard to breathe, and failing completely, and so I gave up on the idea of finding a proper seat as an extravagance as my knees buckled and I sunk down into the carpet. I didn't know how long it lasted - I suspect it only felt like forever - and then the attack ended as quickly as it came, and I was left alone on my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath and instead retching and coughing blood onto the white carpeting.

It takes us far too long to die. Cut off any poorer creature's air and he'll suffer but a few minutes. An Icejin can survive in the same state for hours, sometimes even days. But how it hurt.

The best scientists, physicians and mystics that that half a thousand different world had to offer were unsuccessful in discovering the source of this affliction, nor in finding a useful course of treatment. Incurable, for all the Empire's resources.

I should have liked to compose myself before Aiken returned, but when I turned shakily to look out the window I could see that she was staring up at the ship. The transparent superplastic is tinted, and from outside she could see only her reflection, cast in shades of deep purple, but something had altered her to my distress. Her mobile ears were tilted forward, and I wondered at their acuity. Was her hearing so fine that she could hear me through the insolated walls of my ship? The lizard hung limp and forgotten in her hand; her claws were buried in its flesh, and the blood dripped down into the dusty earth unnoticed. She bolted for the hatch.

I considered locking her out, but quickly reconsidered when I realized that she might well tear the hatch off in panicked haste. Instead, I turned my back to the doors, making use of the fountain once again. The cephalopod that Frost installed in the fountain stirred when my face appeared above the water, its skin flashing shades of purple and ivory. I've long held suspicions that the thing is sentient. At least my face was clean - no bright infant dribblings this time - but I sloshed the cool water over my face anyway.

There was no hiding this from Aiken, and I didn't try. Instead, I simply refused to acknowledge it. I watched her through the mirror as she stepped into the throne room, my eyes hooded and carefully cool. The lizard dangled forgotten in her hand, it's tail dragging on the ground, dripping new blood onto the carpet. I whirled toward her. I could wear my brother's face like a mask; it was not difficult for me. "Give," I said, holding out my hand, before she could ask any questions. She handed it to my eagerly, hoping for praise, but, more importantly, for confirmation that I was well. Her gaze was more direct than was proper, and her eyes hungered for comfort.

She held the messy creature out to me, and I took it only gingerly, trying to avoid getting its blood on my skin. It's my fault for frightening the dumb girl the way I did, but I had wished to examine it alive. Dead thing were so dull. I turned the lizard over, studying the deep tears in its flesh as well as the animal itself. "Mightn't you have gone a bit easier on it?" I asked her, without deigning to look up.

"Sorry!" she yapped miserably, "Sorry! I'll get another -" I glanced up, cutting her off with a look, and saw her wilt, her tail dropping low.

I gave no further response. The lizard's body was cooling already, and there's a surprising heaviness to it. Its skin was dry and scaly, not smooth like mine own. Worthless, primitive creature, but it had looked so graceful on the rock. There's a few apparent similarities between myself and it, but nothing remarkable. It seemed the faint inkling of kinship I experienced when I first saw it was mistaken. Still, it was an interesting mystery, that a creature from so distant a corner of the universe could bare even a passing resemblance to myself, or that we could even breathe the same air. Consider the Saiyajin; one could place them on nearly any world, no matter how dire and inhospitable, and they thrived. Nasty beasts they were, but there was something low about them that allowed them to find a way to survive - and to conquer - no matter what their situation. And theirs was a form that recurs throughout the universe. In fact, though reports on this little backwoods rock are sketchy, it's said that the native race were nearly identical to the Saiyajin.

What were the odds of such a terrific coincidence? One could almost suspect the Gods of laziness...

Aiken's ears perked up suddenly, and her head jerked toward the window, focusing on something far away. I saw nothing of interest. "They're coming," she whispered. Her fur stood on end, and her eye were wide, the pupils dilated. "The wind..." she said, and then stopped again. "Too fast. Too, too fast. So fast..." she babbled, and then something seemed to strike her like a blow. "Leave," she said. "We need to leave."

"Be quiet!" I snapped, and her words break down into faint whimpering. She's terrified, and at the moment that's enough to frighten me. An Inujin ought to fear its master and nothing else, and Aiken had always been a very good Inujin. They're coming, I thought, but who? A band of natives, perhaps an army? But such things would never scare Aiken. The Super Saiyajin then - but more than one... were there others with him?

I was not prepared to face a group. I had hoped to find the Super Saiyajin while he was alone, and to provoke him into killing me quickly. If he's among comrades, though, this business could become a matter sport. It came to me suddenly that Furiza's first encounter with this creature hardly ended in a clean death. He floated in the void, cut to pieces but still alive among the ruins of a dead planet for days before Papa found him. If Furiza ever told Papa what happened between him and the Super Saiyajin on Nameksei, the story died with them both here, on this planet. I realized suddenly that I may have made a very bad mistake.

But I must stay calm, and keep my face blank, so none of them could see that fear. If he realized how weak I really was this could shape up to be a game instead of a battle, and then things would only go that much harder for me. Better than going the way Frost went, no matter what happens, no matter how cruel this Saiyajin was. No matter what, I'll keep everything in battle cold and organized and distant, as it ought to be, and I'll not reveal my motives to anyone. Just stay clam and don't go soft, and Aiken will be bold to the last, and it will be a good enough way to die.

I intended to die well.


	4. Chapter Four: Juunanagou

_"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people." _

— Lucille S. Harper

**Seventeen**

My will is my own; I'm a free and independent actor. I do what I want, when I want, because I want to, and I always have.

But when Son Goku was dead, it got harder to remember that. Things got downright flaky around the edges. I might have done a thing or two that in retrospect maybe weren't good ideas, but who was going to stop me? It wasn't like anyone important was paying attention. But my sister got spooked, and ran off into the arms of the first man who would have her, just like she always did when things got tough.

I found out he was alive again a good twenty-five years ago. Since then I've gotten my own shit back together, but I haven't had much of anything to do with Son's group, and that wasn't a habit I planned on breaking today, never mind who or what was in the spaceship that a had come down a few minutes before. My sister might be content to attach herself to the first man to come along (if you wear generous enough to call Son's pet shrimp a man) but my independence didn't come that cheap. As long as Son's around it's in my best interests to stay honest, or at least to keep a low profile, so I've avoid people and the temptation for havoc that their weak little buildings and weak little bodies provoked. He wasn't one of them, but he always got so fussed when they were hurt.

The spaceship came down just a few hundred kilometers from my home. It had been a long time since anything like this had happened, and in the interim some might have gotten old or lazy or distracted with bratlings, but I hadn't. While Son Goku and his lackeys were just beginning to move toward the ship, departing singly and in pairs and groups, I was already watching the thing from behind a convenient outcropping of shadowy rock. Not even Son can sense a Jinzoningen, and they wouldn't find me unless I wanted to be found.

I just wanted to see. I've never heard of anyone visiting Earth with pleasant intentions, you know, and those who do come tend to be pretty strong. I needed to know that they weren't going to be a threat to me or what was mine.

The vessel's outer hull appeared to be made of some sort of bone-like material, ivory colored and textured like stucco. Small port windows, tinted a dark royal purple, dotted the circumference of the hull, and a larger, ovoid window took up a sizable portion of the wider end of the egg-shaped ship. The windows were too darkly tinted for the shapes behind them to be made out. The ship rested on a tripod of thin struts, and a bulky, furry creature stood before it, her back to me.

I hadn't had the training in the finer points of reading ki that the other martyrs had, but I'd been working at it on my own. If a mental midget like Son Goku could manage the feat, then it couldn't have been beyond my own abilities. I didn't pick up all that much, though. There were two more in the ship. Two of the three would just be mooks, and you couldn't expect (and wouldn't get) much from them. I studied the stronger one's ki closely, and bit back a bark of laugher when the reading slipped into focus before my mind's eye. It had to be a mistake – or else some sort of bad joke. There wasn't hardly _anything_ to her.

The alien standing in front of the ship appeared to be keeping guard; she looked nervous. Were they expecting company? I darted closer, passing directly through her line of sight to reach a new mound of stone, moving too quickly for her eyes to catch me. I could destroy the ship now, and all three of them would be dead before they ever perceived any threat.

From behind the rocks I could watch the whole upcoming show from nearly any angle and never be seen. Satisfied, I started out toward the vessel, my hands balled in the pockets of my jeans while the desert wind blew through my dark hair and ruffled the bandanna around my throat. I looked damn good. I looked fucking great.

The alien took notice once I moved out from behind the stones. She raised her arm, pointing what I supposed to be some sort of energy gun at my chest. The weapon was mounted around her thick forearm, and a bead of red light glowed from inside the cylindrical muzzle, like one animal eye in the darkness. I didn't worry about being hurt by that little thing, though had she wrecked my clothes I might have had to get angry. I continued to move forward nonchalantly, pausing once again to study a remarkably boring rock. The alien was beginning to look more puzzled than aggressive, which was what I had hoped for. She lowered her arm, watching me with the corner of her upper lip peeled back to reveal heavy-duty teeth. This was too damn easy.

The alien looked like nothing so much as an over-sized bipedal pit bull, all muscle and blocky corners. Her hips were wide, while her waist was slightly thinner, and it was from this scant evidence alone that I derived her gender, because there was nothing else feminine about her. Her face jutted out in such a way at the jaw that it was nearly a muzzle, vicious fangs poked out from under her thin lips. She was covered in a coat of stiff, short brindle-colored fur, marbled black and tiger-orange, darker and shaggier at the top of her head and down her tail. Her ears, large and erect, were set high on the sides of her skull, and surrounded by further turfs of fur. The alien's scouter, a model I've never seen before, was clipped to the fur along the side of the skull instead of being mounted over the ear. Her armor was of the same standard sort that seems to be favored by all intergalactic invaders, a heavy and rather too revealing shell, black on the main, with burnt orange accenting and pauldrons at the shoulders.

"Lo," I said, and, taking my hands from my pockets, bowed, briefly and with flourish.

She consulted her scouter, looking at the little screen cross-eyed to read it. If I had a zeni for every time some idiot came to Earth trusting that glitchy little piece of second-rate tech, and died because of it. She looked back at me, smirking with all her carnivorous teeth bared. "You're worthless – don't even _got_ a reading. My Mistress doesn't want me to bother with the vermin, but you'd better get out of here or you're going to be in trouble."

"Maybe I like trouble," I told her. "But share: What kind of trouble?"

She held up her hand, and I saw that her fingers were tipped by long, metallic claws. "This kind," she said.

So, not only was she ugly, she was also dumb as a fucking rock. I returned her smirk, but said evenly, "Fair enough. But first, tell me; are you here to fight the Saiyajin?" If she said no, I meant to end this little game right then; by the time the martyrs got here, there'd be nothing left but smoking ashes for them to puzzle over, and I'd be long gone. If they were here looking for anything but trouble, then it can't mean anything good for me or my long term plans. I put up with Son and his lackeys out of necessity, but I won't have another group of ki manipulators coming under Son's wing, and I wouldn't like to see him forming connections with off-worlders who might bring more powerful beings to _my_ planet. If, on the other hand, they were here to battle Son, then I anticipated the usual blood fest, and was content to sit back and watch the show. It'd be fun.

"We're here to kill the Super Saiyajin." She said this with absolute confidence; it was going to be one hell of a laugh riot when reality hammered this bitch right in her square-shaped jaw.

The martyrs were closing quickly, which meant it was about time for me to disappear. "Well," I said, "Have fun with that." I turned my back on her, and started off in the opposite direction from my hiding place. She made no move to follow. Once I'd moved out of her line of sight I leapt, unseen, back to the concealing shadows of the small mount of broken stones.

I made myself comfortable, settling in among the rock, and set back to wait for the show. I could see the martyrs in mind's eye, specks of light that intersect about fifty kilometers from here. The specks – eleven of them – paused briefly, conversing, and then started forward again. And then, an instant later, they were here, landing in tandem just paces away from me.

Here they were, Earth's finest, touching down on the dusty ground near the ship, and you'd never see a more ridiculous sight.

The Triclops, the Tinny Clown and the Bandit, "warriors" so outclassed by the Saiyajin and their get as to be hardly worth mentioning – it's a wonder that they even bother to show up for these sorts of things.

The Scholar, who – for some unfathomable reason – had brought his young daughter and frail human wife along for the ride. He wears his bristly hair short cropped and gelled into submission to hide an unfortunately canny resemblance to a relative long dead and longer disowned. He had discarded his professor's suit for a clone of his father's gi, different only in that his bears, instead of the Turtle Master's sigil, that of the egg-birthed demon who served more as a father to the boy than Son Goku ever did. One wondered if Son had the gray matter to realize how thoroughly his old enemy had replaced him in his firstborn's heart. And, speak of the devil, the Namekjin himself had come as well.

The Little Brother, the boy cursed with all his father's brains and all of his drive, trailed after. Lacking the opportunity and ambition to make his own way, he's yet to even move out from his parents' home. He's just pissing the years away, wishing for something bigger and not knowing what while the time passes by.

He and the Miserable Executive are two pieces cut from the same cloth. That one had put aside his fake glasses for the day, but his hair (finer and more humanish than that of the Son boys) was still in its prissy and singularly unattractive part. It's said that my alternate self made life nothing less than one long hell for his, but I cannot imagine that Mirai no Trunks was ever as miserable as this waste is in his workaday drudgery. Playing human behind his silly desk, does he ever envy his other, harder self?

Born into a world of long-shadowed titans, these crossbreeds were doomed to mediocrity before they'd even been conceived. Nothing they can do – no matter how daring or bold or new – will ever seem as grand as the exploits of their sires. Questing, fighting monsters – human, alien or mechanical – attaining new peaks of power; it's all so old hat by now. Is it any surprise that they try so hard to seem normal? They'd be human if they could be. After all, there's very little about Saiyajin culture that these human-tamed children could wish to emulate.

They're kidding themselves, carrying on with their gainful employment, with their studies and their desk jobs and their happy little nuclear families. I could make them nasty, every one of them. I could make them do the things that they only dream of doing today. Blood tells, under the right pressures it always tells.

Never mind about the rest – you know who they are. My sister and her damnable pet midget. And the Saiyajin, of course, Son at the forefront of the band, Vegeta not so much behind as apart.

The martyrs and the alien stared at each other. The humans stood clumped together in the back, nervous because they knew that this sort of thing most commonly ended with one or more of them beaten to a pulp, if not dead outright, but some misplaced sense of duty or pride brings them here nonetheless. You'll never catch _me_ sticking _my_ neck on the chopping block like that, I tell you.

Finally, Son took some initiative, and asked the obvious question: "Why are you here?"

The alien cocked her head to the side and raised one bush eyebrow, staring at him as though he struck her as especially stupid – an acute judgment, considering the source. Without bothering to answer, she began scanning each member of the group in turn with her scouter, and her face betrayed a growing level of disgust. They're suppressing their power, of course, but she couldn't know that. "Worthless, all of you," she declared at last, then barked, "Get! My Mistress doesn't want anything to do with you primitives."

None of them seemed to know quite what to say to that; it's been a number of years since anything like this has happened, you see, and they're were all a bit out of practice. Tarble was their most recent intergalactic visitor, and the battle against the two villains he drew here with him was hardly in deadly earnest. That was a full fifteen years ago, though Son and Vegeta hardly looked worse for the time that's passed; Saiyajin seem to be slow agers, though I suspect they will fail quickly once they've passed their natural prime. The years weighed more heavily on the humans, many of whom were much older than Son to begin with. There are wrinkles around each of Tienshinhan's three eyes, and gray steaks in Yamcha's long black hair. Faced with a receding hair line, the midget has taken up shaving his own pate again.

Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest and gave the alien a sour look. Sometimes I wondered: Are Son and the others really dumb enough to believe that they've somehow gentled that one? I'll tell you this for a fact; he's no better than I am. He's not tame or good now or even all that attached to the humans who called him family. He's just waiting for his shot, for Son to die or weaken or let his guard down, and once he sees that chance all rules will be off. "Don't waste my time, Inujin," he said. "Retrieve your Master."

"My _Mistress_," the alien corrected him, with a severe look, "only has business with the Super Saiyajin.

"Get her," Vegeta said.

The alien – an Inujin, presumable – laid her ears back and bared her teeth, the skin around her wet nose wrinkled up into a snarl. "The Lady Frigid is not subject to the whims of vermin," she said, carefully articulating what was clearly a memorized spiel. Big words, and I'd bet money that she didn't understand a third of them.

Vegeta twisted his face into a smirk which ugliness rivaled that of her own. "Frigid? The Icejin _Frigid_ has come _here_ – with business for the Super Saiyajin?" He chuckled, soft and cutting; there was cruelty in that laugh that even I could learn from, and I committed the sound to memory. I might have liked the guy, if I hadn't understood him so well. He cut the laugh off abruptly, his expression becoming droll. "You must joke."

The Inujin skinned her lips back further, showing all her long white teeth and the pale purple gums that they were set in. Behind her, the hatch of the space vessel hissed open, a paneled ramp extending down to the ground through the opening, but she didn't seem to notice. She lunged forward, and Vegeta shifted his weight and balled his fist in anticipation.

A stern voice came from the interior of the ship. "Aiken," the voice commanded, and the Inujin came to a halt directly. She was only a meter away from Vegeta, and I waited to see if he'd step forward and kill her then, but he remained in place, a smug little smirk on his lips. The Inujin backed off slowly, her eyes fixed on him, fangs still bared, until she came up even beside the ramp.

Stepping down the ramp, two new aliens emerged from the interior of the ship. The first to come into view, having ducked to slip through the narrow hatchway, was tall but fine framed, and very nearly human in appearance. Her arms and legs, which were revealed in their entirety by formfitting armor that left very little to the imagination, were tightly muscled. Her turquoise-tinted lips were thin and mean – lips like that, you could tell that she was a bitch and a half – and her eyes were large and almond-shaped and green. She had skin of a pale and powdery blue color, while her hair was the color of cyan and cropped in a bob just below the ears. A spherical earring dangled on a thin silver chain from one ear. Unlike the Inujin, who seemed to possess no sense of personal dignity, this one had all the haughty carriage of a woman with a colossal stick up her ass.

Now the other – the one that came down the steps behind the blue – she was a great deal stranger. Her skin was ivory-colored, with the slightest tint of silver, and had a chitin-like gleam to it. Her face was flat but for a small nose and a faint pout in the lower lip, all terminating in a chin that was short and symmetrical. Dark lines traced the edges of her jaw, and her eyes were outlined in black, as though they'd been painted with kohl. The crown of her head was rounded, and capped in luminous purple. There were similar patched of the same hard, stone-like material on each of her narrow shoulders, and another, larger and diamond-shaped, was set in the center of her chest. She was naked, but her form displayed none of the unfortunate… biological connotations that would have been present in a human in the same state.

That would be Frigid, then.

She stepped down onto the dusty ground and paused there, her long tapering tail wrapping itself around her ankles as she stood studying the group of fighters with a thin, annoyed frown on her lips. Aiken moved to her side. "I recognize the Namekjin for what he is," Frigid said to herself; she had a way of speaking that seemed to carry with it the expectation that everyone else would be listening intently to her words, whether she bothered to address them directly or not. "Uragiru," she said, naming the blue, "I was under the impression that race was extinct."

"Presumed extinct," Uragiru said. "The entirety of the species was believed to be on-planet when your brother destroyed Nameksei."

"Sloppy, that," she said, "not knowing."

"I can fix it," Aiken rumbled eagerly, and flexed her claws. For his part, the Namekjin in question watched the trio discuss himself and the fate of his species impassively, though when Aiken showed him a flash of fang he returned the gesture in kind. Certainly he'd keep mum on the existence of New Nameksei in front of these three, especially given the fact that two of them were wearing scouters. He seemed to think much of himself and his faculties, the Namekjin did, but don't forget that it was his idle boast that alerted Vegeta and Furiza both to the existence of the Dragon Balls. Why, if he'd only remained silent until Raditsu was good and dead the entire course of history for two planets might have been different. Old Nameksei might still be marking its peaceful rotations around its twin suns, and Son himself might never have become much more than he was when he died that first time. Shudder to think, in such a world I might not even exist, or might still be a common and dull mortal. No, Piccolo has never gotten enough credit for that little fuck up, as it sent all that followed into motion.

Meanwhile, the martyrs were busy muttering amongst themselves, the midget and Gohan in a huddle around Son. They spoke as though they expected their counsel to be valued, though Son's attention appeared to be focused solely on the aliens, whom he watched steadily. It was hard for the midget to confer in secret with men of normal height, and he looked up at the two Saiyajin as though hoping that they would crouch down for his benefit. "Furiza's sister," he said, a coward's dread creeping into his voice.

Gohan showed his teeth at that, emulating his Namekjin master unconsciously. "They're hiding power," he said, and – as though subconsciously aware of how ridiculous this claim was – he added insistently, "They have to be."

The midget reached up and latched onto Son's arm. Son glanced down at him unwillingly. "Multiple forms," he said. "That has to be it. We need to _stop her now_, before she has a chance to transform." Son Goku blinked, then with a jerk of his head he returned his gaze to the aliens. The midget had never been a brave creature, but it's no surprise that Son should be confused by such a remarkable display. How could the little fool possibly expect such a line of reasoning to work on the likes of Son Goku – did he forget the risks the great oaf took against Cell? Was it age that made the midget react with such terror to such an obviously piddling threat, or thoughts about his bratling?

I believe that Aiken was the only member of the trio who heard that exchange, because only she reacted, sidestepping closer to her mistress defensively and showing another bit ofof fang. Frigid returned Son's stare steadily; I could not guess what they might be thinking. She was the first to break the stare, shifting her eyes to Piccolo instead. "A Namekjin," she said, when the silence had gone on for too long. She said it with finality, though no one had actually confirmed Piccolo's race for her, and then moved on to new business; "And one can assume the rest of you to be human?"

"No," Son said, and still there was nothing on his face that I could read. I don't like to admit it, but in battle he is a completely different creature from his usual boarder-line retarded self. It's almost uncanny.

"They are," Son said, indicating each of the humans in turn with a nod of his chin. "We're Saiyajin." Vegeta, Gohan, Goten and Trunks stepped forward, and in the same instant the humans seemed to fade into the background, dimming in importance, though they did not actually move. Pan nodded her head stiffly, but – uncertain as to where she really belonged – did not leave her mother's side. If that one's managed to pull an SSJ I've yet to hear of it. I suppose her father thought she'd learn something by coming here, but she's barely ten and hardly Saiyajin. The sorts of shit parents try to push their kids into, and people wonder why I killed Gero.

"Nonsense," Frigid said. "You've no tails, and your combat levels are laughable, even by Saiyajin standards. Moreover, that one doesn't even have hair of the proper color." She cocked her head at Trunks, inviting an explanation for those feathery lilac locks. Vegeta looked over his shoulder to glare at his son, as though the boy had chosen to take after his mother on propose, simply to be an embarrassment.

Trunks went red, and Goten – always the good friend, always the mature one – snickered. He became abruptly silent when Vegeta and Frigid turned tandem glares on him. Vegeta's power level spiked slightly with his tempter, and the scouters Aiken and Uragiru wore beeped in sudden alarm. Uragiru studied Vegeta more closely than she had before, and then spoke to Frigid in a low voice, "He bears a strong resemblance to King Vegeta's boy… though that one was said to have died on Nameksei."

"I remember," Frigid told Uragiru. "One of my brother's wards." She frowned hard at Vegeta, before turning back to Uragiru and saying (in a much softer voice), "I can't tell one from the other, they all look so very much alike. You're certain it's the same creature?"

"How could I possibly be certain?" Uragiru snapped, "Why don't you ask _him_?" It was a surprising thing, because one doesn't expect lackeys to mouth back, even when faced with the stupidest of questions; as soon as it was said all three appeared shocked that it had been, and none more than Uragiru. A growl rumbled in the base of Aiken's throat.

"When we are finished here - " Frigid began, her voice deadly soft.

"Right," Uragiru said, and – for some inexplicable reason – Frigid let the matter drop there. There was more going on here than I understand, and it's intensely frustrating.

She did not, however, bother to ask Vegeta if he was, in fact, Vegeta. She simply ran with it. "Vegeta," she called out, "How is it that you've come to be here?" Vegeta just smirked – unlike some other people, he's not quite fool enough to announce the mystical qualities of the Dragon Balls in the presence of strange aliens wearing communication devices. She pressed him, "My brother claimed to have killed you."

Instead of answering directly, he said, "The likes of Furiza were no match for the Super Saiyajin." Ah, do you see what he did there? It is all I can do to keep from laughing uproariously.

"You?" she said, and again, I knew that I was missing something here. I don't know how I would have expected her to react to such a claim, though I suppose disbelief would have been near the top of the list. She surprised me, though, because she didn't seem at all surprised. Unhappy, sure, but not surprised.

Son Goku is not without ego, and he didn't allow Vegeta to claim his thunder. "Both of us," he said, and moved forward to distance himself from the weaker fighters, lest they be burned. Vegeta saw where this was going, and also stepped away from the others, but Son's energy flared up a second before Vegeta could call out his own.

It would be impossible to describe what it was like to personally witness a Super Saiyajin's power, let alone that of two at once. I am strong – I am one of the strongest beings that have ever or will ever exist – but my design was such that I have precision control of my own power. With a Super Saiyajin things were very different. The raw energy that surrounded Son and Vegeta spiked and flaired violently, lashing out at their surroundings. Yellow flame licked the grass and scorches the earth; where the Super Saiyajin stood, the stone melts and the oxygen grows thin. The very earth trembles under their feet.

Believe this: human life means absolutely nothing to me. Left to my own devices, I'd mow them down by the thousands and the millions, and raze their cities into black jumbles of melted steel and chaotic flame. Because they couldn't stop me. Because I can. But these others –they're meant to be the heroes. They're supposed to be the good guys. Oughtn't they be more responsible, these saviors of the Earth? They act like it's nothing, but one mistake while they're in this wild state could irreparably damage the planet. They risk so much – your life and my own, far more precious existence – they risk _everything_, simply to display their power for the benefit of one incredulous stranger.

The scouters beeped frantically. Uragiru torn hers away from her face before it exploded, but Aiken's blew up in front of her eye, and she yelped in surprise. Trunks, Gohan and Goten arrayed themselves beside their father – having also moved away from the humans for their own good – and, all together, went Super Saiyajin as well.

Uragiru was silent, but her powdery blue skin had taken on a greenish tint. The growl boiled out of Aiken's throat again, and she moved to place herself between Frigid and the Saiyajin, before the Icejin sent her back to her original position with a firm "No. Stay where you are, Aiken, and do nothing more without my leave."

Son powered down, and the others did the same. They looked to Frigid for reaction, but she gave them nothing. "Not too bad," she said dryly. "Better than I expected to find on this rock anyway," she added, in a way that made clear that she hadn't expected much to being with. She's a fine actress, but it was nothing more than an act. These heroes are supposed to be so great, so why can't they see through such obvious bullshit? They ought to be laughing her off the planet, but instead the martyrs – all but for Son and Vegeta – show in their own unique ways, varying degrees of confusion, shock and fear. Vegeta only smirks, but Son's face is more inscrutable; What – if anything – was going on inside that dusty brain case of his?

And what's this Frigid messing around at, anyway? You'd half suspect that the dumb bitch was suicidal.

She scanned the group, and with a careless flick of her wrist singled out Yamcha. "Aiken," she said, "Kill that one for me first," and Aiken stepped forward, ready and eager to comply.

Yamcha moved to meet her just as willingly, looking confident for once, and ready for a fight. These days it's so rare a thing that an enemy that one of the humans can handle pops up. He was glad for the chance to try himself, I think. "It's all right, Goku. I can handle _that_ easy," Yamcha said, when Son looked ready to step in. I wasn't so certain; their combat levels were about matched, but he was out of practice. Son looked uncertain, but he returned wordlessly to the group of martyrs, and all backed off to give Yamcha and Aiken room.

Aiken plopped down on the ground to remove her boots, revealing wide, furry feet and toes tipped by long claws. She bounced back to her feet, and went to meet Yamcha. Slowly, they began to circle one another.


	5. Chapter Five: Frigid

_Remember this-that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life. _- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

_I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves. _- August Strindberg

**Frigid**

It was no trick for me to act nonplused when the Saiyajin made a display their power. I'm well accustomed to moving among unpredictable creatures vastly more powerful than myself, after all, and I'm long past finding new levels of brute force impressive; there comes a point when one must simply become numb to it or else stop functioning entirely for the fear. Their power was… adequate to serve my propose. Indeed, if I played this situation properly, I might be able to arrange the situation to the best possible results. These people had no scouters; if I could convince them that I was a legitimate threat their reaction would be quick, extreme and violent.

I've never found great entertainment in the torture and slaughter of inferior beings. There are, after all, so many more constructive and interesting ways to spend one's time, many of which don't involve getting dirty. Nonetheless, I was well familiar with the sport, as I'd witnessed it often enough. There was a formula to these sorts of things, a certain etiquette that one was expected to stick to. I could not allow these creatures to sense that anything was amiss, so I held to the standard procedure. First came the challenge, a trade in insults, boasts and threats. Next, one was expected to pit one's dispendsables against those of one's opponent. Only when the lesser fighters have completed their lesser conflicts and died their lesser deaths did the main contenders meet in battle. There's no need for the Saiyajin to know how unexpendable I would have considered Aiken under normal conditions, or that I was far from one of the most powerful fighters on the field. Aiken would serve me well here, as she always longed to do. She would help convince them of my own strength, for she was fearsome enough to down any number of the human slaves the Saiyajin had brought along.

I found nothing particularly offensive about the human I singled out to die. He's no uglier than the others. But though large, he looked somehow to be the easiest target in the lot. The human's skin was tan-colored, the face striped with scar tissue, and his mane of black hair was threaded with strands of gray. He was tall and well-built, and if muscle had much at all to do with true power he might have been strong. He'd put on a brave face for the occasion, but one can't expect to con a con-artist. This one's bold show of confidence was fragile and false, a hide for jittery nerves and a deep dread of failure. Here's one accustomed to losing when he ought to have won, and it's fostered in him not a small amount of bitterness. As good a choice as any.

My Aiken began to circle him, as surely as she'd stalked the lizard I'd sent her after earlier. She moved in a low crouch, her hands held level to her chest, fingers splayed and claws gleaming. The other stood with his shoulders tilted, one hand cupped above his head and the other balled at his side. A strange stance – quite stylized – and I'd never seen anything quite the like. He turned as she circled, always keeping his face toward hers. Aiken's muscles trembled with the desire to leap upon this human, but she held back, gauging her opponent's ken, waiting for an opening to present itself.

"My, this is pointless," Uragiru muttered from behind me. I believed that it was meant for me to hear, but when I shifted my eyes toward her sharply, she refused to make eye contact, playing as though she hadn't spoken.

For pride's sake it seemed important to put on a united face in front of these aliens, vermin though they may be, so to avoid drawing attention I kept silent. Uragiru was never mine, nor did I understand why Frost kept her, as today's behavior was not unprecedented. He permitted too much insolence from that one, made excuses for her, but since he's gone I haven't had the heart or energy to bring her into check.

Back on the field, something was about to happen. The human had come to a stop, his legs splayed and bent in a fighting stance. He flicked his fingers toward himself with a strange sort of gesture that for all its foreignness clearly communicated his desire that she should come at him. Aiken stared at him for a moment, ears cocked forward, and then she charged.

He dodged the first blow, ducking away from her gleaming claws smoothly, and then he dodged her second and third and fourth attempt, moving faster than he ought to have been able to. Then, when she tried to get in a kick, he bounded into the air and drove his elbow into her gut. Even as he was landing the blow Aiken brought up her feet and raked her claws down his thigh and across the kneecap. Aiken was thrown back, snarling and skidding across the rocky ground to land near my feet. The human stood unsteadily, a grim smile on his face, his gi torn, the blood flowing from the long rent in his flesh and dripping down his leg.

Aiken grinned up at me from the ground, her fangs rosed with her own blood, one big paw pressed over her belly. The glee of an Inujin at battle for her master's sake is something pure and fearsome. Presently she climbed to her feet, ready and eager to wade back in.

The leader of the band – the stocky, over-built Saiyajin whom the human called Goku – looked ready to step in, and I tensed in anticipation. Would he lash out against Aiken for marking his human, or at the human for allowing himself to be marked? But in the end he stayed where he was, and Aiken began to circle her opponent again. As before, he turned with her, always keeping his face to hers. Ah, but he was lagging now, favoring the wounded leg gingerly. His face was beaded in sweat.

He crouched, bending at the knees with a grimace of pain, and held up his hands with the fingers curled inward. A fog of energy began to form around him, growing in swirls of color and dark. The energy took form, a silhouette of a snarling beast much similar to an Inujin, eyes blazing red behind him, as fearsome in aspect as Aiken could ever be.

"Rugafufu-ken!" he shouted, and leapt forward, hurling himself at Aiken with all the power of the attack behind him, and the shadow beast seemed to merge with him until they were one in the same. The blow hit Aiken square in the jaw, spraying blood and broken teeth and tearing the skin from his own knuckles, and her head jerked back so violently that I thought her neck might have been broken by the blow. She stumbled backward but kept to her feet. It was a good hit, but the last one he got in.

Aiken lowered her head between her shoulders and growled. So suddenly that I hardly expected it myself she leapt forward and routed her opponent completely, pressing him backwards, blow after blow connecting to draw a new flow of blood. He's well trained for a primitive, but Aiken was running on pure vicious instinct, and there was naught that could better that. She spun him away from her with a blow, and then grabbed his long mane from behind – more fool him to wear his hair so long – and, pressing him against her chest, jerked his head up and back to expose the throat. He fought against her, trying to tear free or strike back, but there would be no getting away now. She had him, for good and all, and in a second she would open his throat and that would be the end of it.

I cannot properly explain what came next, for it all happened too quickly for my eyes to follow. One moment Goku was standing grimly on the sidelines, and a millionth of a second later Aiken's opponent was free and being drawn into the fold by his companions. Two or three of them supported him like an unexpected burden, for by then he was too battered and bloodless to stand under his own power. I looked quickly for their leader among the crowd, but he wasn't there. My eyes darted back to Aiken, and I saw that she was on the ground, and Goku converging on her sprawled form.

His wrath was up now, and it was something smoldering and fearsome to behold. This was… looking to be a simpler matter than I might have hoped. Close now. I stepped forward to meet him.


	6. Chapter Six: Juunanagou

_I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave. - E. M. Forster_

**Juunangou**

Let's talk about Yamcha. The guy was an international sports star; he had tens of thousands of fans; his own line of sportswear; even a baseball card with his face on it. If he'd known how to handle his money he'd be filthy rich. Physically, he's in the top 99.99 percentile of humans, despite his age. By any fair measure he's more than exceeded expectations. But here he was, trying to measure up next to beings endowed with far greater natural ability, and – provided he's lucky enough to survive the experience – he's going to beat himself up when it turns out that he can't.

Anyway – big surprise – he lost, and not only that; he lost so hard that Son had to step in to save him from a messy death. The Saiyajin struck Aiken across the back of the neck with the edge of his hand before she could open Yamcha's throat, and her eyes rolled up to show the whites as she went limp from top to bottom. Her hold on Yamcha failed as she collapsed bonelessly into the dust, and Son caught him under the arms before he could fall as well. Moving so quickly that they barely had a chance to catch him, Son handed Yamcha over to Tienshinhan and the midget, who dragged him back into the center of the group while the rest surrounded him protectively. He was bleeding seriously in a dozen different places, so he'd better hope that they thought to bring along some sensu beans. If they didn't, Yamcha can look forward to dying today, or – if they managed to stop the bleeding – going through life with a substantially larger number of scars than he started out with this morning.

Aiken landed face-down and unmoving in the dirt. Most people can't fathom the level of restraint required for a truly powerful being to interact within an environment designed for and peopled by considerably weaker beings. For someone like Son the difference between knocking someone like Aiken unconscious and separating her head from her body was infinitesimally small. If Son had meant to kill her the damage would likely have been obvious, so for this reason I figured she was probably still alive.

"Take him and go home," Son told Frigid, jerking his chin at Aiken. Him? Well, the fool's never had a firm grasp of gender differences, and the Inujin was far from the picture of femininity.

Gero had Son and many of the others under near-constant surveillance for more than fifteen years before I was created, and kept extensive records of all he learned. So I knew – though I was not personally there to see it – that Son Goku had once said something very similar to Vegeta. I looked to catch Vegeta's expression when Son spoke, but if the words triggered any sort of feelings or memories he didn't show it. His expression, a smug little sneer that said that he knew exactly what was going on here but wasn't about to share, never changed.

Were he at all clever, I might have suspected that Son had offered to spare Nappa's life as a ploy to postpone a battle that he had little chance of winning. But Son being the way Son is, this would mean crediting him with entirely too much foresight, and so I am forced to conclude that the gesture was sincere. By all reports the guy was twice as ugly as Son and nearly as stupid, so I'm hardly fussed about any missed opportunities to enjoy his company, but it must have sucked for him.

Son saw how it was, he saw it with his own two eyes and still he's dumb enough to let Vegeta move around the planet freely. As though he could be trusted. As though he wouldn't serve Son or anyone else who inconvenienced him in exactly the same way if there was a percentage in it for him. Nappa didn't see it coming, either. He should have expected, but he never did.

Most people are like Vegeta, they just don't have the power to back it up. But one way Son and many of his martyrs are different from normal people is that they truly do consider themselves above killing, even when they know they can get away with it. For them it's a matter of last resorts, reserved for only the most dire of situations. Son, especially, has been known to go to absurd lengths to avoid taking life. And so, though his face was set in hard lines as he turned back to Aiken, I knew she was in no danger – at least from him – as long as she stayed down.

It seemed unlikely that the Icejin would hold to similar notions. I waited to see if Frigid would give Aiken the same treatment that Vegeta had given Nappa, but she didn't even spare the Inujin a glace as she stepped over her prone form on her way to meet Son. Why, it might have been easy to overlook the way she'd managed to put herself between her pet and the Saiyajin. So smoothly was it done that I wondered if it had really been intentional, or even a conscious decision. She didn't bother to response to Son.

I've called Frigid weak, and so she was – when compared to myself or the Super Saiyajin, or even to the other Icejin who've come here in the past, but this is to set the highest possible benchmark. When Vegeta first came to Earth everyone concerned – including Vegeta himself and at least two Gods – agreed that a power level of less than twenty thousand qualified him as one of the universe's finest. Today, among present company, twenty thousand amounts to less than a bad joke, but bear in mind that at that time Vegeta was more than capable of killing entire worlds. Frigid was perhaps five times stronger than Vegeta was when he first fought Son.

Son needed to watch his ass. She couldn't hope to hurt him directly, but if she got clever she might fuck us all over yet.

Frigid stopped a hand's length away from Son, and threw her head back to look up at him. Son Goku, though excessively bulky, was not by most measures a tall man, but nonetheless he dwarfed the Icejin. Face to face they were a picture in contrast; the Icejin, ivory-skinned and exquisitely petite, with her long tapered tail coiled around fine-boned ankles, and the hairy Saiyajin, in form brutish and muscle-bound, coarse mannered and common as hell.

Her expression showed indifference, but that's a hide, a calculated mask for whatever else she might actually be feeling. The tip of her tail, lashing violently, was likely a better indicator of her mood. "How dare you interfere -"she began, but he cut her off.

"No," he said. "We're not going to play this game anymore."

"Do not presume to tell – " she started, but stopped herself there. When she spoke again the false-faced distance was replaced by real determination. "Let's just get this over with," she said. "You and I."

"You'll lose," Son Goku said.

Behind Son, Yamcha rose to his feet under his own power. His gi hung in bloody tatters, but he'd had a sensu bean, and - psychically at least - was completely healed. He stood there, his fists clenched and his face pale with shame, looking as though there was nothing he wanted more than to be somewhere else. Yamcha did not look her in the eyes when Frigid cocked her head at him. "My," she said. "You lot are just full of tricks."

Her eyes shifted to the midget, and when he saw her watching him he hopped into a defensive pose nervously. The Icejin gave a nearly unperceivable nod, and then looked back to Son. "You and I," she said again, "Or I and the small one." At the edge of the crowd, sweat broke out on the midget's forehead. She could kill him alright, and easy, and they all knew it.

Son didn't answer, but his face closed up and turned hard. Bad mistake on her part to threaten the midget; if she wanted to get killed, that was the best thing she could have said. Son shifted his eyes skyward, and Frigid understood his meaning at once.

"Good," she said, and rose smoothly into the air, moving upward until she hovered high above their heads. After a moment, Son followed.


	7. Chapter Seven: Frigid

_I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. _- Dave Barry

**Frigid**

I waited for the Saiyajin on a grass-topped plateau, a slim stony point barely wide enough to perch upon, and my feet clung to the rocky edges for balance. The landscape was dotted with such brown-stone mesas, tall and thin and often tipped by scanty vegetation. From there I looked down on the scene below, the foreshortened players a hundred meters beneath me.

It was hard to say if Aiken was alive or dead. She did not move. I hadn't dared to check; safer to feign apathy. Bad enough that I should care at all in the first place, but far worse for her and I both if they came to suspect that she might hold any value to me. I'd not see her suffering turned as a tool against me.

The Saiyajin toyed with me. He couldn't be anything but pleased at the prospect of claiming another pound of flesh for his murdered race – Furiza gave him ample reason to want nothing more – but still he played at indifference. He pretended at an unwillingness to fight, even some fuzzy sort of concern for my wellbeing, but it meant nothing. Furiza himself was almost always affable, and never more so than toward beings he'd already decided to do away with. No, I've no trust for amicability.

"Leave," he told me, but even if I could allow myself to do so, the time for that was past. He'd never really permit us to go now. How could he possibly dare, when he must know how easily I could kill this entire world – and him with it – from the safety of high orbit? If I turned away now, it would only be to be struck from behind as soon as I imagined myself to be safe, and I'd suffer all the more and look twice as foolish for it. I knew how these games were played.

Things needed to be brought to a head, so I saw that they were. I knew well enough that even monsters have some affection for their pets, so I studied the band of humans carefully and picked out the one I thought most likely to be the Saiyajin's favorite – a cringing, unlikely creature, hairless and even smaller than myself – and then I threatened it. Before the scouters had overloaded the small human had shown a power level that I was more than capable of dealing with. That, coupled with the way he had earlier dared to grab the Saiyajin by the arm - and suffered no rebuke for it - suggested that the Saiyajin kept him more for affection's sake than utility. And it must have been that I guessed correctly, because my words brought the Saiyajin's blood up quickly enough.

He brought his feet down on a plateau across from and a little above my own. A slight clench of his fists, and the yellow aura again surrounded him, bathing his body in a glow of energy that looked as though to burn, lifting his suddenly golden hair and greening his dark eyes.

Was this the last thing my brother saw before he died? Most thought the Super Saiyajin to be nothing more than a mythological creature, but Furiza brooded hard the thing; he'd never been hesitate to shame or torment or kill any the lesser beings over which he had absolute power, yet feared finding himself on the other side of the equation more than anything else. I am certain that in Hell Furiza will be completely without power, for to him nothing could be a harsher punishment. When I see him I'll laugh. I'll laugh at him, as I've always wanted to, and I'll tell him, "You ought to have known that it's the thing you fear the most that always comes for you in the end. But _you_ never did get _me_. That was a task given to your better." I'll say everything I ever wished to say, and he won't be able to stop me.

"Ah, here's the Super Saiyajin come again," I heard myself say, and didn't know how it was that I could sound so distant and unconcerned in the face of what he was. My hands were shaking, but I kept them crossed over my chest to hide it.

"This is just the first level," he said, in childish boast. "I can do better." No doubt it was praise that he wanted, as my brother ever did, the awe implicit in any show of abject terror. Odd, that truly powerful beings should require such constant validation from their lessers. He wouldn't have the gratification from me, at least not so long as I could help it. The Saiyajin waited, staring as though he expected me to respond to some cue. When I only glared back, he seemed to grow annoyed and – odder still - somehow disappointed. "Aren't you going to transform?" he demanded at last.

"Spare me the absurdities," I said. I'd no wish to expose my own ineptitude sooner than necessary, so I waited for him to make the first move, but he only stood there, frowning gravely. He didn't seem as cross as he'd been before, and that was disconcerting; it was nearly as though he'd already discounted the threat I'd spoken not two minutes before. "What then?" I said.

"I want to ask you a question," he told me.

"What?" I snapped again, and was unnerved by the scratchiness that crept into my voice, the small catch in my throat.

"Are you a girl?"

As though the entire situation wasn't shameful enough, now it seemed that I was to be mocked as well. Quite on their own accord, my feet constricted around the stones they were curled about, and the rock fractured into rubble. "Are you brain damaged?"

The Saiyajin's hand went to the side of his skull, rubbing at the scalp self-consciously. His frown grew more serious. "I just wasn't taught to hit girls," he said gravely.

"Don't be an ass." Under my long glare, the Saiyajin's hand slowly fell to his side. A few moments more, and that hand wandered sideways to hold his other arm at the wrist, in a gesture which struck me as absurdly shy.

I needed to reevaluate the situation, that much – if little else - was clear. Maybe he really was feeble brained. Everything I needed from him, the power and the rage and wild violence needed to back that power up was there – I'd seen it clearly enough – but already it had fallen below the surface, leaving behind a quizzical and somehow childish man who seemed to be in hurry to fight.

"You're wasting your time," he told me. "You can't win - you'd better just leave before you get hurt." A dreadful suspicion; he might mean it. He really might.

Never mind. It didn't matter. Monster or fool or both in one, I'd turn him to my will, though he might never learn how he was used. The instincts are there – it's only a matter of drawing them out, of provoking him to greater violence. It seemed that I would need to kill one of the humans.

I glanced downward again. Aiken still hadn't stirred, but some of the Saiyajin's people had moved to circle her, bent as though they meant to poke. The small one that I'd threatened before was among them. I dropped down, descending to the ground to land in front of him. He was much smaller than the others – surprising, because otherwise variation among his species seemed to be as severely limited as it was with the Saiyajin – but I was fairly certain that he was not a child.

I might have told the small creature that I didn't take any pleasure from the thing, but there was no point in it; such knowledge would be of no comfort to him. He was a pet, certainly, as my Aiken was, but a poorly chosen one. The fearful creature wasn't made to battle for such serious stakes. He's less suited to this business than even I.

Silently, I turned my palms out toward the small human and called up the energy. It burned toward him in a red stream, a slim column of fire. Eyes growing wide, the human raised his arms to block my attack, his own palms likewise cupped outward, and then surprised me by counter with his own beam of energy. There was more strength in him than I would have thought, and his stream pushed back against my own for a short distance before I planted my feet more firmly and made a better effort. Jaw clenched, he bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut, focusing everything he had into that beam of energy. Were I to dither now he'd die thinking that I only done it to mock, therefore – smallest favor – I didn't hesitate.

I turned my own face downward, marshaling my power to make a sure end of the surprisingly fearsome little creature. I poured energy into the attack – more than I'd had cause to call upon for years – and imagined the matter nearly settled, but sudden it wasn't enough, and I found myself being pressed back by a far greater power. I looked up sharply, and saw a second beam of energy joined to the small human's, and followed it along its length with my eyes to find the Super Saiyajin at its source. He stood behind the human, one hand upraised over the smaller creature's head, the attack flowing from his palm effortlessly, countering my best without the slightest sign of strain. Panting, his naked head shiny with sweat, the human let his hands fall, terminating his own beam. The Saiyajin's power was so overwhelming that I don't even register the small one's absence. He hurried to move out of the Saiyajin's way, his breath still coming hard as he rejoined the group, and was quickly surrounded by a forest of protective legs, some longer than his entire body. Strange, to imagine having such a discordant band concerned for one's welfare. Stranger still, that the Super Saiyajin should so readily step in for such useless beings, and twice now.

So now I've gotten what I came for. The Saiyajin was killing mad, and all the unfocused softness has gone from his eyes. Looking into eyes like those, feeling just a fraction of a percent of a power that's like the burning of ten stars against my blistering palms, it's easy to understand why, upon his return from Nameksei, my brother so often woke screaming.

I dug my feet in and bent forward, pushing against the Saiyajin's beam with all the strength that was in me, but nonetheless I was driven backward, his attack inexorably engulfing my own. The back of my foot came up against Aiken's arm, and I glanced down to see her stir slightly at my touch. Stay down, I wanted to tell her, but didn't dare speak out loud for fear that it might give the Saiyajin cause to wonder. Close to the end now. All I needed to do was drop my arms and let the thing overtake us… but it seemed that was not so easy a thing to do.

It was in my best interests to take advantage of this opportunity quickly, or risk a harder though just as certain death later. Yet I couldn't seem to bring myself to give in that easily. I've feared death too long – my brother saw to that from the start – to stand still for it now. I kept my arms up, though they felt as though they might snap at the elbows under the force of the Super Saiyajin's energy beam. I was where the small human had been a minute before, and from the start I've known how poor a place it was to be. Like him, I bowed my head and closed my eyes, battling to keep the thing at bay. Still, the pressure grew. I chanced one brief glance upward, and saw the Saiyajin stepping closer to me at his own relentless leisure, the beam pressing on before him. At my feet Aiken was stirring, and I was fearful that she'd knock me off balance. The Saiyajin's beam, close enough now to scorch the palms of my hands, burned louder than the end of the world.

I may have spoken. I don't know. At that moment, the crackling roar of the Saiyajin's power overwhelmed all else. If I begged him stop – if I screamed – my own voice was lost to me in the din.

He swung the attack away suddenly, and I turned astounded to watch it go by. The thing furrowed through the earth, cleaving its way through the bedrock and tossing up scorched dirt and stone by the ton in its wake. When it came within some meters Uragiru she dived away from it in a panic. The beam went on past her, shooting toward the ship, which stood unprotected and undefendable, and when that beam struck the ship and everything inside it simply ceased to be. The surrounding hills were thrown upward, boulder-sized chucks of stone raining down into the crater where the vessel had stood.

I watched the cloud of rubble and dust descend, my fingers curled inward, nails biting at the flesh of my palms. For behind me, I heard the Saiyajin say, "Oops." I looked at him from over my shoulder, and saw he was staring at his handiwork with a sheepish grimace, one of his arms crooked over his shoulder. I whirled on him, and in a few quick strides closed the remaining gap between us. My hand struck the fool's face with a crack that rang out among the mesas and empty spaces. His flesh did not yield in the slightest – though my own hand, already brunt from the Saiyajin's attack and bleeding from my own clawing, now felt as though I'd broken something inside it. It seemed to take him a moment to realize that he'd been struck, but once it registered he reached up to touch his cheek, a sort of surprised hurt in his eyes.

"Do you think this is a game?" I tried to shout at him, but found my voice caught in my throat, harsh and croaky. _No_, I told myself, I will not allow this to happen now, not when so many watchers could see me. But it couldn't be willed away. I felt it coming, constricting around my throat and bring my breath up short, and I tried to fight it – to at least hide it – as the Saiyajin reached out in a blur of motion to grab my arm. His hand was rough and slightly wet, and huge enough to encircle my entire wrist, his fingers overlapping and covering his thumb. Though he did not clutch so hard as to cause pain, it was enough to know that with a small twitch of his muscles he could tear my arm off at the shoulder.

"Stop acting stupid," he said, as though I were a child he could scold.

I wrenched against the Saiyajin's hold, and he let me go – but not immediately. No, first he let me fight uselessly to pull free for a few moments, before pointedly releasing my arm, as though he meant to instruct me as to who had the upper hand.

I turned my back on him. My throat was growing tighter, locking off the flow of air into my lungs. I thought to flee, if only to avoid embarrassment, but there was no chance of my making it far, and no place I could go that the Saiyajin couldn't follow. I heard his feet shifting uncertainly in the gravel behind me, moving closer. Wrapping my arms around my chest to keep them from clutching uselessly at my throat and hutching my shoulders, I moved a few steps away from him. The bloody fool followed, peering quizzically over my shoulder while I gasped and struggled.

The human I would have killed spoke up from behind the Saiyajin, his tone one of bewilderment. "Goku… did you hit her? I didn't see anything."

"Uh-uh," the Saiyajin said. "She just… Hey, what's wrong with you?" I felt his paw descend, heavy on my shoulder. He'd dropped out of his more powerful state, and the hairs on the back of his hand were again of the common black color. "Are you okay?" he asked, as though it was a simple thing, or for that matter any business of his. I didn't want him touching me – I wanted Frost – but the weight didn't lift when I tried to jerk away. What in all the Hells was _wrong_ with these people?

There's one small thing that I could be grateful for; It did not seem to be one of the more serious attacks. The thing passed almost as quickly as it came. Breathing easier, I stayed curled over as though still in pain, until the Saiyajin shuffled just a little closer. Then I shot my elbow out, back into his gut. The blow drew from him a small grunt, and sent him quick-stepping backward a short distance. "There," I said, turning to glare at him. "You see?" I could give some small hurt; I was not completely powerless. The other, meaner person had surfaced in his eyes once again. Has the small human – so bold to speak to the Saiyajin as an equal, even to question him – ever seen what I could see now?

I didn't see the movement, yet I was struck; once in the stomach, and then again across the shoulders while I was bent from the fist blow, my hands clutched over the immense pain. The second blow drove me to the ground, down to my knees in the dirt of this mad little world. I knew that I needed to get up, strike at him again for the sake of pride and my plan – I could still have my way in this, if I provoked him enough he'd be bound to forget himself – but I didn't think I had the will for it. There was something very wrong with my shoulder; something inside it shifted grindingly when I moved.

I could not bring myself to look up at him. I stared his feet instead, wondering all the while if they would lash out to kick me. I liked no part of the Saiyajin, but the feet I liked least of all. Precariously acute with all the stumpy toes facing in the same direction, shod in the worked hide of some animal and bound with rope, to me they seemed repulsively abnormal. More than the outsized hands, the pointlessly ropy tails, or the grotesquery of hair, it is the Saiyajin foot that won't allow me to accept the whole being as anything but bestial. I couldn't understand him if I wanted to. "On Nameksei," I asked those strange feet dully, "Why didn't you just kill him?"

"I'd never been that angry," he said, "Furiza killed a lot of people who never did anything to him, good people – some of my friends, too." He paused, as though struggling to put his thoughts into words. "I wanted to make him pay. But after I beat him there wasn't any more point to it. There wasn't anything worse I could do to him. I thought, 'He's stupid, but maybe now that he knows what it's like to fight for his own life he'll learn something.' I thought I could make him to understand what it was like."

Could such monstrously foolish innocence really be possible? "He learned nothing," I spat, but there was so much more to it than that. Shall I tell him? Might be that I could break the fool with what I know, just as his power could break me.

Maybe I'd spoken too rashly, because the Super Saiyajin did teach my brother one thing; he taught Furiza fear the likes of which he'd never known before. Yes, because if a member of a relatively trifling race like the Saiyajin could prove to be such a shocking threat, how then could Furiza rest easy while there was any chance that another, potentially even more powerful creature might one day emerge from the wings? To quell that unquellable fear, he and Father killed no less than eight planets before Furiza considered himself sufficiently recovered to turn his attentions to Earth and the Super Saiyajin that he meant to meet there. Father was running nearly as scared by then, too, though he hid it better than Furiza. When they'd still been alive, Furiza had been wanton enough to treat his Zarbon and Dodoria nearly as friends, but after the debacle on Nameksei their races were the first he snuffed out. After that it was the home planet of each member of his Ginyu Force, though those creatures were only mutants, and their abilities were not indicative of those of the rest of their species.

It's hard to say where it would have ended. The list of planets he intended to purge when he returned from Earth ran into the dozens. If a race had shown any sign of producing a semi-competent warrior it was slated for elimination. Uragiru was a member of the same race as Furiza's own Zarbon, and if he hadn't been killed when he was he would have had her life as well; by then Furiza had developed a manic aversion toward loose ends, judging them to be especially dangerous. He meant to make an end of the Inujin too, and my Aiken as well, though they're for all intents and purposes a domestic species. Frost thought that we might hide them away somewhere, but I don't believe I could have dared it.

"I know that now," the Saiyajin said. "It was a mistake."

"Don't repeat it." There's no choice whatsoever left now, no other path opened to me – retreat was never an option, but with the ship and scouters destroyed it was now an impossibility. I found my way to my feet. My right arm dangled, hanging lower at the shoulder than it ought to have. I held it at the wrist with my left hand, trying to conceal the extent of what he'd done – he did it so easily – and to hold some of the pain at bay.

"Why are you acting so dumb?" he asked me, petulant and annoyed. "I don't get it."

"You know what you're dealing with," I told him. "I won't go away and I won't give up. You'll have no peace. The moment you turn your back on me, I'll kill the entire planet out from under you. How long can a Saiyajin survive, floating in space?" I couldn't breathe in space anymore than the Saiyajin could – that was a trick of Furiza's, somehow drawing air from naught to allow extended survival in a void, and a skill that seems to have died with him; I was unable to locate anyone who could teach it to Frost or myself, or even hazard to guess if it might be of use in treating our condition. But the Saiyajin needn't know that.

"You wouldn't."

"I can. You know I can."

I'd given him no choice, and he knew it; there was no walking away from a threat like that. He stepped toward me, the yellowish flame springing up to engulf him once again. My first instinct was to step back, but I'd learned by then that any sign of fear or hesitation was sure to distract him. I only needed to pretend at bravery for a little while longer, and this whole nasty business would be over with.

Behind me, I heard Aiken moving.

"Oi, Goku!" one of the humans called out cautiously, "That other one's getting up." Before he'd even finished speaking Aiken had put herself between the Saiyajin and I, scrabbling through the dust to get there. She stood in a crouch, still swaying unsteadily. Under the stiffly bristling hair on the back of her neck I could see a knot of swollen flesh at the base of her skull. He must have knocked her out intentionally, but now did he do it without killing her outright? Furiza never had such fine control of his power.

"You stay away," she growled at the Saiyajin. Her voice was thick and unsteady – it seemed to me that it was only through the greatest of wills that she was even on her feet. "You just stay away. Don't you come any closer."

"Aiken!" I said, sharper than I meant. Why can't I be better than I am? Why couldn't she have just stayed down? Aiken looked back at me, loathed to take her eyes from the Saiyajin but bond to turn at my voice. Grief and terror and rage flooded her face all at once when she saw my arm; she takes any harm done to me as a deep and personal failure. Desperately confused, she searched my face for some sign, for anything that would cue her as to what it was that I wanted from her. If the stupid bloody bastard had just killed her before this wouldn't be happening – I wouldn't have to see her so scared now. "You're in my way," I told her. "Move."

She whimpered and shifted her bare feet nervously, but stayed where she was. Never before has she disobeyed, but now she turned her back on me to show the Saiyajin her teeth. With a strangled growl she repeated again, "You just stay away now."

Here's what I'm reduced to in the end; mad shrieking while my Aiken learned that there was such a thing as futility. "Do it!" I roared at the Saiyajin. Aiken turned again at my words, turned to look at me. And then, very suddenly, she understood. I could see the understanding dawning in her eyes even as that same understanding deadened the light there. I didn't want things to happen this way.

The fight went out of Aiken in an instant, leaving behind nothing but a listless sort of cringe, a hopeless sideways bearing of fang as the Saiyajin stepped toward her. "Don't," she said again, as he reached his arm out. She leaned away from his touch, and then her legs collapsed out from under her, and she folded to the ground. The Saiyajin squatted beside Aiken, and two terrified influenced warred on her face as he leaned over to lay his palm on her forehead; the desire to snap at him, and the fear of what might happen if she did.

He hushed her quiet. "I don't understand," the Saiyajin told her. "Explain, please." Aiken did not speak, but as he pressed his hand between her two folded ears, her eyes grew wide with bafflement. "Okay," he said, a few moments later, and shifted his hand from her forehead to scratch behind one of her tattered ears. She leaned into it with an easy sort of trust that I had thought she reserved for Frost alone, and the tension and defeat seemed to drain from her.

The Saiyajin straightened. Turned toward me. What mockery is this? He _smiled._ "I get it now," he said. "You guys better come with me."


	8. Chapter Eight: Juunanagou

_A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossing with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality._ - Cyril Connolly

_I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. _- Voltaire

**Juunanagou**

So Son Goku's an idiot, but everybody knew that already.

Exactly where he came up with his little collection of mystic's tricks is less well understood. Gero had little solid data on the subject, and tended to dismiss or misinterpret what he did know. The spybugs recorded the midget holding an argument with Son, at a time when Son was way too busted up to reply verbally. Later, after everyone but Son had returned from Nameksei, the midget claimed that Son had instantly known about events that had transpired in his absence by simply touching his forehead, and Gohan had agreed that this seemed to have been what happened. Gero had dismissed these claims as lies or delusions, an estimation that has since been shown to be just one more example of the fact that Gero didn't know shit. The inexplicableness of the whole thing - the foggy parameters of his abilities – is infuriating. None of his acquaintances seem to have bothered to question him as to the extent of these skills – not within my hearing, anyway – and all the heavens forbid that it might ever occur to Son to wonder about himself.

What I'd seen to date seemed to indicate that he could broadcast his thoughts to any person or persons at any point on the globe at will, but to take a peek inside someone's head he had to make physical contact. All I had to say about that was that he'd better not ever try to help himself to _my_ thoughts, or we're going to have a problem.

Son would have Frigid's secrets now, at least so far as her dog understood them. It'd be a thing to see when she realized that little fact. I bet she'd just love it.

Though honestly, by the end of that fight – if you could even _call_ it a fight – it didn't take a mind-reader to work out the salient points. The way I figured it, the Icejin was even sicker than she looked, and had come here assuming that the Super Saiyajin would put her out of her misery if she pulled enough shit on him. Too bad for her that Son Goku's too dumb to fool. Probably he knew that she was sick from the start; it was the rest of it that threw him off. That she might know what's in her best interests better than he did was not the sort of thing that would ever cross Son Goku's mind.

And on top everything else off, he destroyed their ship, so there'll be no getting rid of them any time soon. And I would have liked to get a closer look at that thing; I might have had myself one hell of a joy ride if Son hadn't busted it.

"Give me those," Son said to the midget, motioning to the small drawstring bag of sensu beans that he held in his hand. Son turned his back on Frigid to do this, and for a moment she looked set to take another go at him. She started to step forward, but when the motion rolled her broken shoulder forward she came to a sudden and complete stop, her lower lip pinned between her teeth.

"We don't have a whole lot of these left," the midget said doubtfully, but like the tool that he was he handed the sack over anyway. With Son between the two of them he wasn't afraid to stare at Frigid, and he didn't seem happy with what he saw. She resembled her brother almost as strongly as my own sister took after me, and the midget would need to be a bigger man than he was to avoid holding that against her, especially in light of recent events.

"You guys go on ahead," Son said. "We'll catch up."

"Kakarot, do you mean to take them home with you?" Vegeta demanded. He said it with the usual tone of outraged disinterest and undisguised disgust that he typically employed when addressing Son, but there might have been a rawer edge to it. They say that he cried when Furiza killed him. They say this as though it _meant something_, though I can't imagine what - it wasn't as though he'd never given just as good as he got. But he cried, so never mind that the number of people who did the same at the prospect of being murdered by our favorite Saiyajin Prince were more likely to number in the billions than the millions. And forget how badly Son's boy and the others must have _wanted_ to cry when Vegeta sicced Nappa on them, and their savior so inexplicably and inexcusably tardy while they were picked off one by one. Sure, they wanted to cry – with the coming of Saiyajin the universe had suddenly and irrevocably become a big, bad place, and for no particular reason it was dead set on coming to getting them – but they didn't. There's something telling about a guy who can't take what he dishes out.

Us poor Saiyajin, we never started nothing with no body. Don't buy it. It wasn't the injustice of being put down like a vicious dog that made Vegeta weep like a little baby – it was the pure and simple fact that he wasn't strong enough to do the selfsame thing to Furiza that Furiza did to him, and there wasn't anything more to it than that. And nothing's really changed since; if you're stronger than Vegeta then you're shit for making him feel weak, and if you aren't stronger then you're shit for _being _weak.

Karma's a bitch. Vegeta and Furiza were cut from the same mold, and they both got what was coming to them, and it all would have balanced out if Son's people had just had the sense to leave the bastard dead. I've always suspected that they never meant to bring Vegeta back to life in the first place. They phrased their wish thoughtlessly, as they often do, and he got lucky was all.

I don't think I need to spell it out, and I'm not going to – it isn't that hard to get. I only had to have my own ass handed to me the one time before I figured it out. That's the only way I'm really different from my other self, I think – I had the chance to be on the other side of the equation, and I know just how bad it sucked. Vegeta knew right from the start what it was like to be used hard without being able to do a damned thing about it, and that never slowed him down for a second.

I'm not like Son's people; I _remember_ how he helped Cell hurt my sister.

"I guess I've gotta," Son said. "I know Chichi's going to yell at me about it, though."

"You're astonishing."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. There is no idiocy that you won't allow yourself to be driven to for sentimentality's sake."

"Lucky for you," Yamcha cut in. Jealousy is fun to watch, isn't it? Especially when it's so old yet still festering. Yamcha was the closest thing to a normal person that group could claim; he hadn't forgotten the unforgivable as easily as some others either.

"Old man, are you so tired of life?"

Yamcha turned his head away from Vegeta and stuck up his nose. His eyes caught Uragiru, who was still near the crater where the ship had been, and they latched on. She was watching Son and Frigid closely from the distance, while brushing herself off fussily, and her expression was one of a woman completely and utterly _fed up_. It was an expression that she killed abruptly when she realized that she was being watched. Uragiru was obviously used to concealing her feelings; compared to her neutral frown, Yamcha's expression was disgusting transparent.

"Whoa," Son said. When they both pointedly ignored him, Son went on as though the exchange hadn't happened. "I'm just going to try this, okay, Vegeta? That's all."

"You're Saiyajin, Kakarot, do you remember?"

"I know it."

"I doubt that."

"I know it," Son said again. "I don't need any trouble over this, alright?"

"Please," he sneered. "That one was a bad joke thirty years ago, and nothing's changed since. This whole business is beneath my notice."

Exit Vegeta, stage left. He had to make a show of it, of course, shooting away with an excessive burst of ki that fractured the ground under his feet and left the newly exposed stone smoking. A sonic boom echoed in his wake, rattling the surrounding pebbles and drawing a pained grimace to Aiken's face.

Nope. He couldn't have cared less.

The others wandered off more hesitantly, shooed away by Son, who was beginning to look irritated at their lack of confidence. Much as I'd like to, I can't blame them; there wasn't anything more formidable between our feet and the planet's core than a few thousand kilometers of stone and unrefined mental. It wouldn't take much for her to screw us all over but royally.

The midget hung back after the others had all buzzed off. "I hope you know what you're doing, Goku," he said.

"Nah, I'm just winging it," Son told him.

Hard to be sure from the distance, but I do believe that the midget was mutter something dark under his breath as he left. Son watched the sky until he was nothing but a bright dot at the distant end of a long contrail, then he turned back to Aiken.

She sat slouched over the ground, with her head between her upraised knees and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Son squatted beside her. "Dizzy?" he asked.

"Somebody is making the ground wobble," she declared, with a fuzzy sort of outrage. "I don't like it."

Son pulled the know on the drawstring bag open with his teeth, and shook one of the sensu beans out into his palm. "Eat this," he told her, holding the sensu out. "It'll make that stop."

Her nose twitched, but she didn't open her eyes, and she didn't take the sensu bean. "No," she said, and tried woozily to shake her head for emphasis, before giving that up for a bad plan. "My Mistress before me."

"She'll get one," Son said. "Don't worry."

"No," Aiken said again, and slid back into the confused, half-coherent babble of before. Maybe Son did hit her harder than he meant to. "No, that's not right. There's a right way to do things and that's not the right -"

"Aiken, won't you just take the damnable thing," Frigid said wearily.

That was apparently all Aiken needed to hear. No sooner were the words spoken then she had speared the sensu bean on the tip of a claw and popped it into her mouth. "Wow!" she shouted with astonishment, "That feels good!"

Son grinned down at her, and helped her to her feet with a tug on the wrist. Aiken followed at his heels as Son stepped toward Frigid, his hand extended with a sensu bean nestled in his palm. He moved like a person approaching an animal – a snake or stray cat – about whose tameness he was not completely certain.

I'd nearly forgotten Uragiru, but suddenly she hurried toward them. "Don't eat that," she said sharply. Then, moderating her tone to one of caution said, "It could be anything."

It was, I thought, a strange thing to say under the circumstances – If Son wanted to kill Frigid he certainly didn't need to resort to cunning – but the others didn't seem to take note. Admissible in Son and Aiken's cases, obliviousness being their natural state, but I would have expected the Icejin to be more attentive.

"It's medicine, Uragiru," Aiken explained eagerly. "It is going to make her better."

"Just the hurts," Son cautioned her. "I've got to think on the other. We might be able to do something about it, but I don't know yet. It hasn't come up before."

Frigid's eyes were fixed on some middle-distance over Son's shoulder, and even when he bobbed and weaved his head to put himself in her line of sight she would not make eye contact. "I can conceive of absolutely nothing in this universe that I could possibly want from someone like you," she said flatly. She seemed badly disconnected from the action around her, and it was hard to say if this was as a result of physical trauma, mental shock or a mixture of the two. Son just being Son was often more than enough to send people who knew and actually _liked_ him stuttering with outraged confusion. She seemed to have opted out of the entire business, and was – perhaps willfully – not entirely there with the rest of us right then.

I didn't like it – the new act wasn't only dull, it was inscrutable. She was making it impossible to tell what – if anything – she was thinking, and that might turn out to be dangerous. She'd shown no disinclination toward resorting to the most blatant manipulations to get what she wanted from him. Denied, there was no saying what desperation or pique might drive her to.

"I figure you wouldn't be here if that was true," Son said, and at that she did look at him. She looked at him _mean_, and he raised his free hand to wag a finger at her. "Don't hit me again," he said. She flinched at the gesture, then turned her head to the side with a short, insulted shound.

"I figure you wouldn't be here if that was true," Son said, and at that she did look at him. She looked at him _mean_, and he raised his free hand to wag one finger at her. "Don't hit me again," he warned. Frigid flinched at the gesture, then turned her head to the side again with a short, insulted sound. But she'd seen the sensu bean, and despite herself the knowing that it was there drew her eyes back to it inexorably.

"Come on," Son said, and again his tone was that of someone coaxing a shy animal or a small child. He didn't _mean anything _by it, of course – Son Goku never _means anything_, for all the difference it makes.

They stood at an impasse for nearly a minute, Son's infuriating cheerfulness slowly transitioning to an obnoxious sort of impatience. The idiot openness of Son's face made her own non-expression all the more disconcerting.

"Aiken," she said, a note of desperation creeping into the command. What she wanted was obvious, but instead of taking the sensu bean from Son and giving it to her, Aiken looked down at her intently, with a puzzled cock of the head, as though awaiting clarification. Obfuscating stupidity, or a genuine misunderstanding? Might be that the dog had her own ideas about what was in her mistress's best interests. Frigid might well have had her own suspicions on the matter, because she did not press Aiken further.

When at last her arm did reach out it moved jerkily, pulled between pride's restrain and pain's need. Good comportment carried some weight with her, even now, because she did not snatch the thing up. But those manners only went so far; when she picked the sensu bean up with the very tips of her thumb and forefinger, it was impossible to miss how carefully she avoided brushing Son's flesh.

Son watched expectantly as she ate the sensu bean, but Frigid displayed no visible reaction as it took effect, none of the usual wonder or amazement with which people normally responded when given one of the mystical beans for the first time. He'd better get used to the disappointment; she wasn't going to give him much, and nothing intentionally.

"Okay," Son said. "We're going to go back to my place. We're going to get something to eat then we're going to figure out… something. What we're going to do about all this. Alright?"

"Why?" Uragiru demanded.

"Why what?" Son repeated.

"Why are you acting like this? Are you stupid?"

It seemed to me to be a perfectly valid question, especially considering the circumstances, but Aiken didn't take well to it. "You just shut up," she growled. "All you're trying to do is start trouble, so you just –"

"Aiken," Frigid said, and Aiken understood her well enough that time. She fell silent so abruptly that her mouth was left hanging open, and she only thought to close it a full three seconds later. Her teeth clicked together.

"He can't help it," Frigid told Uragiru, with a mixture of disgust and pity and bitter humor. "The poor creature, he's _good_."

"Yeah," Son said agreeably, and looked over his shoulder in the direction of his home. Frigid raised a hand to her face and pinched the bridge of her nose as though to forestall a headache. For a moment she looked very close to losing it completely, but by the time Son turned back her mask was carefully back in place. She's catching up to the reality of the situation at last. I've got her number; she won't ask for anything, and won't thank him, but she'll take what she can get and call it her due. "And it's been pretty boring around here lately. We haven't had any reason to go looking for the Dragon Balls for years. Wish I'd gotten to have a better fight, though."

"_For fuck's sake_," I said under my breath. I was _not_ loud, but Aiken's ears swiveled in my direction anyway.

I saw her tap Son on the shoulder with the back of her hand to catch his attention, then whisper something in his ear that I couldn't hear. He blinked, and she pointed in my direction. "Wait here for a second," he told the others.

Yeah. Time to go.

Or not. Son was already in my way. "Juunanagou!" he said. If I punched that idiot grin right off his face he'd probably kick my ass, but I gave it some serious consideration anyway. "How long have you been here?" he said, and without waiting for an answer – not that he would have gotten one – he added, "How you been? I haven't seen you in years!"

"I can't imagine why not."

"But how're you doing?"

"Oh, I'm awesome," I told him. "Just, you know. A little concerned."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Concerned. That I'm going to find out sort of sudden-like that the planet under my feet isn't anymore. Do you see the problem?"

"Them?" Son said. "Nah, they're mostly harmless."

"Why don't you lower your voice. They can hear you."

"Why shouldn't they?" Son turned and waved a hand at them. Aiken responded in kind, waving back ecstatically. The other two watched him blankly. But when he turned back to me, he did speak more softly. "She's scared, is most of the problem. Someone died."

"Hate it when that happens," I said, and suddenly it was a lot harder to keep my hands to myself. "Especially when they stay dead. How does that make them any less of a threat?"

"I got my eye on them."

"You do? Right now, you do?"

Son peered over his shoulder. "Yeah. I do." He looked back at me. "You can come over, too, if you're that worried about it."

He's right about one thing, anyway; it's been a long damn time since anything this weird had happened around her. I thought of Aiken, so good natured until she sensed a threat or insult directed at the Icejin, then ready and eager to tear out throats; Uragiru, hiding something, and I'd sure like to know what; and Frigid, not cowed the way Son thought she was, but just waiting. Son couldn't handle them. He had no idea how far over his head he really was. Women aren't like the guys he's used to fighting; they don't stop hating someone just because he's proven he's the one who can hit hardest.

Fuck it. It was too good to miss.


	9. Chapter Nine: Frigid

"_Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible." - _Carl Gustav Jung

"_When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem." - _Edward Abbey

**Frigid**

It had been my experience that powerful beings were not given to be good. Goodness was a trait of the weak, easily embraced among those with more limited prospects. Nonetheless, and as ridiculous as it was, it seemed impossible to deny that the Super Saiyajin was – in his own strange way – somehow good. Or, if he wasn't good (the two not necessarily being inclusive) he was at least kind. He meant well, at least.

There might be a use for that. It was only simple-minded conceit that made the Saiyajin imagine that he could do something for me that hadn't been tried, but he couldn't help being limited. He wasn't a worldly creature, and untraveled beings often imagined their home planet to be uniquely special. It was silly of him to suppose that he'd have anything at hand that I, with my far greater resources, hadn't already attempted, but I wouldn't stop him trying. When he failed, as he was bound to, it might leave him more amenable to doing me a favor of my own choosing.

The Saiyajin was excessively tolerant toward his lessers, and Aiken had taken to him already. It might be that he'd be willing to keep her, if I could convince her to allow it. Inujin do not shift their loyalties easily – most would rather die – and Aiken had always been a very good Inujin. Garnering her cooperation might be more troublesome than getting the Saiyajin's consent. He's so simple. I'm sure he could be trusted not to misuse her.

Had I been asked yesterday, I might have said that I expected the Super Saiyajin's haunt to be an extravagant but grim lair. I had imagined that he would have the finest of whatever this planet had to offer, because there was none who could stop him from claiming the very best for himself, but that he would lack the sense to keep any of it decent. Having since been forced to revise my estimation of the Saiyajin, I no longer expected to find a gaudy show of riches amid dead things left to rot where they had fallen, but the place he led us to was still a surprise.

The Saiyajin's home wasn't much more than a well-tended hovel. The fore was dome-shaped and white walled, and had a modular, impermanent look to it. Smoke rose from an opening in its top. In strange conglomeration, this first section sprouted two radically different additions, each apparently added as an afterthought. They were built of wood and stone and other such materials that might have been had within the general vicinity, and the roofs were padded in what looked like bundles of twigs or dried grass. I couldn't imagine that the arrangement could be depended upon to keep the weather out, but perhaps the Saiyajin's standards were lower than my own.

A smaller building sat near the main structure, and in this case the construction seemed more lasting and elaborate. The edges of the steeply peaked roof curled upwards at the corners. Flowers grew along its walls. The surrounding countryside was wild, painfully green, and seemingly endless, though there were at least some natives in the area; in coming here we had passed a small village, situated some kilometers distant from the Saiyajin's home.

I was uncertain as to his proper name. The humans had called him one way, but the other Saiyajin – Vegeta – had named him differently. I'd not thought to commit either to memory, having had no expectation that I should ever have cause to use either of his names. I spent the trip here trying to remember what it was that they had called him, but it simply wouldn't come to me. It wasn't good. This was a very bad time to go stupid.

He had added another to the company just before we'd left the remains of my ship behind – the native boy Aiken had spoken to before the Saiyajin and his people had arrived. I'd thought that Aiken had sent him on his way, but apparently he'd been watching from some secret place. Another witness to my embarrassment. Neither he nor the Saiyajin offered any explanation for his presence, and I couldn't hazard to guess part he imagined himself to play in any of this. He was all manic energy and sullen discontent, and his eyes were strange; Rimmed in faded blue, they dominated his face, demanding attention. Those eyes seemed somehow independent from the rest of him, for no matter his expression they always looked an instant from malicious violence. His contempt for everything – and the Saiyajin especially – was blatant, but the Saiyajin paid it no attention. He had no qualms about staring, and very quickly I found that I didn't like to feel him watching me. He was barely in control of himself.

Id' heard the Saiyajin call him Juunanagou. I suppose that in light of every other absurdity I'd been subjected to over the last hour it would be excessive to complain about people being called after numbers. Compared to most of the humans and Saiyajin I'd seen thus far he was slightly built, but I was fairly confident as to his maleness.

We came to ground a short distance from the house. I followed the Saiyajin up the dirt path to the door, and Aiken and Uragiru followed me. Juunanagou went his own way. He stuck to the grass. He sauntered, his hands hidden in the depths of his pockets. He was the first to spot the angry face when it first appeared in the narrow front window, though very quickly we all saw it. "You're in for it now," he told the Saiyajin with a comfortable sort of spitefulness.

"Oh geez," the Saiyajin said. The woman watching us from the other side of the window had an alarmingly formidable demeanor. She looked angry, and the Saiyajin looked worried by her anger. Was she Saiyajin as well, or a native? I couldn't say. All the Saiyajin here seemed to have had their tails removed, and I knew of no other certain way to distinguish one from the other. Her hair was black, if that meant anything, though shot through with nearly as much gray.

By this point I wouldn't have been surprised to find Saiyajin here in the hundreds. Koola often said that Furiza couldn't be trusted to finish neatly what he'd started - Well, and it was true. When Frost took it upon himself to see for himself exactly what the state of things were directly following my family's destruction he found no aberrations among Koola's records. If Koola claimed to have taken some action – to have eliminated a species, or to have destroyed a planet - then it was invariably so. There was a deal more chaos among Furiza's holdings, though he hadn't conquered a tenth as many worlds as Koola. Koola was a serious person, you see, but Furiza tended to tire of things quickly. His attention would drift. He'd get bored, and he'd take note of some new and interesting world, and he'd simply have to have it for himself at once, but before the place was half his he'd have lost interest already, and would have moved on to the next bright new thing. The forces he'd leave behind didn't always perform to the best of their abilities in his absence.

Once Frost set to taking a proper account, it was surprising how many tattered remnants of races thought to be dead could found in hiding on supposedly depopulated worlds. Point of fact, often times it turned out that Furiza's own men - having been sent to do the very opposite - had been protecting and provisioning the desperate creatures in secret. Sometimes too, Frost could find planetless strays on foreign worlds, though this was less common. He had the same mania for locating rare specimens that Furiza had for collecting pretty worlds, and it pleased him to see them become less rare. I found children of all races to be abhorrent, but Frost liked to see the tiny things well provided for. Indulging him wasn't so costly.

Most things try to stay alive if they could at all help it. And sometimes they did find a way, even when all sense said that survival ought to have been impossible. The Namekjin I'd seen earlier was a prime example of that. Vegeta was another, and a deal more surprising, because the more I thought on it the more certain I was that Furiza had claimed to have killed him. I only met that one once or twice when he was a boy, and hadn't thought much of the sulky child – his minder, an obnoxiously boisterous bald-headed Saiyajin, had left a stronger impression – and so I didn't pay this information much attention at the time. It was entirely possible that I was remembering the thing incorrectly.

"You'd better wait out here," the Saiyajin said, when we'd come within a few meters of the house. He went on alone, taking a deep breath to steel himself before stepping inside. The shouting began almost as soon as the door clicked shut behind him.

To eavesdrop deliberately would be the height of rudeness, but given the noise level it was impossible to avoid. I folded my arms and waited, refusing to acknowledge Aiken's and Uragiru's scandalized expressions, or the capering antagonism that came to Juunanagou eyes as the woman dressed the Saiyajin down. They were each and everyone wishing for a coconspirator with which to discuss the impropriety of this too public marital spat. I'd sunk lower in the last hour than I could have dreamed, but I should hope that I was still above idle gossip.

In short: He had been inconsiderate. He had left suddenly and without explanation, leaving his various obligations about the property uncompleted. He had brought home - without first consulting her - numerous guests for which she was woefully unprepared, having been given no forewarning. He had placed her in a shameful situation. Also, she was highly interested in learning why he had yet to obtain gainful employment.

The Saiyajin made one weak attempt at defending himself – "How was I supposed to know that I'd have to bring 'em home with me?" – but was quickly shouted down.

"It's sort of uncomfortable, isn't it?" Juunanagou observed sardonically. No one answered him.

Inside the house, silence fell like a blessing. "Oh, thank goodness," I said before I could stop myself, and wondered only belatedly if he mightn't have killed her.

Spoke the Saiyajin into the uneasy quiet: "Yeah, Chichi, but when are we going to eat?"

Some minutes passed before the quiet resumed, and by the time she was finished with him I was even less eager to meet the Saiyajin's woman than I might otherwise have been. Aiken had managed to creep her way a deal closer to me than would normally have been acceptable, as though she hoped I could protect her from the woman's wrath. A creature more easily wounded by words than blows, my Aiken. I let her stay where she was.

I fully expected that this Chichi would turn her tongue on me as soon as she'd finished with her man, but when the door finally opened with the woman behind it her demeanor was modest and apologetic. I wasn't at all certain that she was the same person I'd seen in the window – they all looked nearly the same, and my experience with female Saiyajin (or whatever she might have been) was nearly nonexistent. I tried to see over her shoulder, fancying that the shouting woman might still be lurking somewhere inside, but the Saiyajin stood behind her. He was nearly as wide as the doorway, and it was quite impossible to see around him.

"Welcome," she said, and hers was in fact the same voice as before, though deferential now instead of harrying. Chichi's manner and speech were formal, but had a rehearsed quality that lead me to believe that she'd only learned proper etiquette late in life (and then only by rote) but that she considered the effort to be one of vital importance. "Please forgive the poorness of our home," she said, with a slight and deliberate uncertainty that begged direction as to the head of our party. Her gaze favored Uragiru – anthropoid conceit, but unsurprising given the provincialism of this world. I knew too well that I was in no position to take issue, and so only stepped forward.

Thankfully, Chichi shifted her attention to me with little hesitation. There was safety in the distance that formality allowed, and I shocked myself with the _gratitude_ I felt at having found someone with appeared to have sense enough to understand that. Her ire appeared to be reserved for the Saiyajin alone; otherwise, she didn't seem half the savage he was. I found I could return her deference easily, with something near real sincerity. "We're sorry to disturb you," I said, and began to feel as though I was finally regaining some measure of equilibrium.

The Saiyajin did his best to ruin it; he grinned. It was the grin of a foolish child, and it presumed entirely too much.

"Please come in," she said, stepping back to allow us entrance. The Saiyajin didn't move quickly enough to suit her, and she treaded on his feet. "Goku, move!" she snapped, inadvertently giving me at least one of his names. "You're in the way."

We followed her as she led us down a narrow hallway, until we came shortly to a central room. Though not everyone from the earlier group was there – the Namekjin and Vegeta being the most conspicuous among the absent – the crowd had in fact managed to grow in numbers.

At least half a dozen small children whirled around the room, shouting and banging toys together and tugging on one another's hair and at the adults' clothing in bids for attention, and in general making complete chaos out of an already crowded space. Oblivious to the noise, a giant of a man slept seated in a chair built to his scale, with a quilt draped over this legs and a horned helmet upon his skull. Elsewhere, the small human I'd threatened and the scar-faced one Aiken had thrashed sat across from each other, a low table between them, intently focused on a game of cards. The larger human sat on the floor, but the tinny was up on a couch, his legs dangling off the edge while he studied his cards. Two blond-haired women were seated beside him, and (though she did not seem to be part of the game herself) when the one closest to him leaned over his hand to indicate which card he ought to play he followed her direction. The other woman's attention seemed divided between a magazine she was reading and a half-hearted effort to rein in the worst of the children.

Two of the other Super Saiyajin – the black-headed pair, the lavender-haired one being absent – were down on the floor on the opposite side of the room. Spiky haired and tall, they seemed to be two of a kind, so much that I wondered if they mightn't be litter mates. One wore glasses and the other did not, and I took special note of this in case I should be expected to tell them apart later. As similar as they were in appearance, I only had to watch them for a few moments to notice a fundamental difference between the two, and that was that while the one with the glasses looked to be fairly reserved person the other was doubtlessly silly. The former was sprawled out on his stomach, his face cupped in his hands as he listened to the graver one speak. I couldn't have guessed what he might have been saying, as he fell silent when he noticed us in the doorway.

"I wonder if that old Ginyu frog is still around here somewhere," the first said, and then trailed off as he noticed that he'd lost the other's attention. He looked over his shoulder to stare. A moment later, and the entire crowd – but for the old man and a few of the more irrepressible children – seemed at once to take notice, and were staring at me with varying degrees of confusion.

There were words for this sort of situation, but they had seemed to have deserted me completely.

"Goku," the scarred-face said, "where'd you find Juunanagou?" And I realized with a start that it was not me that they were watching so intently, but the human behind me. I turned to look at him as well, and saw that he was slouched with his shoulder against the doorframe, smirking at them all. He was loving the attention, and didn't bother to try to hide it.

Oblivious to all this, Goku bulldozed his way into the room. "Over there," he said, coming up beside me, and pointed to the empty sofa near the matched pair of Saiyajin. He put his other hand between my shoulders, prodding me in that direction. I'd have liked to kill him for that, if I could. Because I could not, to escape his touch I stepped quickly in the direction he had indicated. I set down quickly – the better to keep an eye on all of them - and the sofa sunk under my weight, trying to suck me in. I stood abruptly, and then perched more carefully on the edge, hoping desperately that Goku would not decide to plop down beside me. It was very hard for me to have him this close. Good he might be, but it was impossible to forget that within him he possessed enough brute force to tear Furiza to pieces. He could do whatever he wished to me, and I'd have no say it.

The sillier looking of the Saiyajin pair had watched me lazily from the floor throughout the entirety of this proceeding, his head still propped up in his palms. I returned his look, and felt at once that he must have been Goku's son, because there was the same good humored dimness in his eyes. "I'm Goten," he said.

"I'm pleased to meet you," I told him, though I wasn't in the slightest. I leaned in conspiratorially, for Chichi had seemed to have forgotten introductions, and I didn't mean to draw unnecessary attention to her lapse. I gave him my own name, and then said, "Why don't you tell me what their names are?"

"That's my grandpa Gyumao, the Ox King," he said, indicating the old giant with his chin. "And Yamcha's over there. That's Kuririn, and Juuhachigou, and Marron – she's their daughter –"

"Juuhachigou looks rather young for that," I said uncertainly, halfway convinced that I was being made fun of. I should have thought that the two were sisters, but it was all so far from my area of expertise.

He laughed, smiling with his eyes closed, and said, "Oh, that! Juunanagou and her never get any older."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, they're part robot."

I blinked. Sat back. He didn't strike me like the sort that would have the imagination to come up with such a story on his own. I looked about for Chichi, thinking that I might ask her, but she'd disappeared from the doorway. "And that's Gohan," Goten added, hooking his thumb back at the other Saiyajin. "Trunks was here, but he went home to get the plane," he went on, though I was barely listening by then. "Mom and Dad were supposed to watch the kids this weekend, because we're all going to the city – me, Valese and Gohan and Videl, and Uub and Bra and all – but now there isn't any room here…"

Juunanagou was still there leading against the wall just outside of the room, blocking the doorway while Aiken bounced from foot to foot, trying to work out how to best get around him. I waved my hand at her impatiently, and she dove under his crossed arms to force her way into the room, jostling him in the process. "Bitch," he said in her wake, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that he had been speaking to Aiken.

Abruptly, Juuhachigou rose to her feet, dragging Marron up along with her by the wrist. She scooped up one of the darting children and announced to the rest of the horde, "Let's go play outside now." She must have carried some authority with the brats, for they allowed themselves to be herded away with little fuse. They made a rainbow of differently colored heads, blue and light purple and yellow, though black hair was in predominance, but there wasn't a tail among them. If any were the Saiyajin's get then they've been mutilated, unless their tails were somehow hidden under their clothing. Kuririn took up the rear, corralling stragglers. Juunanagou made an elaborate show of looking in the other direction as they filed past, and Kuririn and Juuhachigou did the same toward him.

There was more going on there than I understood, but I was given no time to try to puzzle it out, as with the passing of the children Aiken had hurried over to me. She wanted the place on my left-hand side, as that was where she'd always been meant to stand, but Gohan was still leaning there. Goten was still babbling on at me, though I'd lost track of what he might be trying to communicate some time before. "Trunks is coming too – he's my best friend. Him and his new girlfriend. I don't remember her name. Like I said, we're all going to the City. It's okay about you guys taking the guest room, though, because Trunks is gonna try and get his mom to take them, and Kuririn and Juuhachigou will if Bulma doesn't –"

"Move," Aiken told Gohan, and Goten trailed off.

Gohan looked her up and down. "This is my parents' house," he said

"Move," she told him again.

There's a conspiracy here. They all meant to see me driven mad before the end, and Aiken was in on it, and they're closer to their goal than they know. "Aiken," I said, "Just sit." When she looked at me quizzically, both ears cocked forward, I waved vaguely at the long expanse of empty sofa beside me. She looked quite dumbfounded, but sat – carefully, so not to jostle me. She was perfect there – she took up enough space that I didn't think anyone else would try to squeeze into the remainder, but had the sense to keep herself to herself.

I noticed that Uragiru had at some point claimed the other sofa, since vacated by Juuhachigou and her family, for herself. Yamcha had followed her there. He did not appear to have the same consideration for her private space that Aiken had for my own. Of late, I've had precious little time to think about Uragiru. Probably I shouldn't have brought her here – Frost wouldn't be pleased, I knew – but it had seemed important that I should get here as soon as possible, and she was the only one I had immediately to hand who could navigate the ship. It couldn't be helped.

Meanwhile, Goku had gone on to a mantle place on the other side of the room. "Hey, grandpa," I heard him say softly – it's always a mistake to imagine that things can't become more absurd than they already are – as he took something down from there.

"Tarble was going to come, too," Goten said, as Goku started toward us. "But Gure just had her baby a little while ago, and he decided to stay home instead. It's a really weird baby," he told me in a confiding tone. "Way weirder than you, even."

There was a low table in front of the sofa. Goku crouched in front of it, across from myself and Aiken. Upon the table he sat a small cushion, about the size of the palm of his hand. He placed an amber-colored orb on the cushion. The thing was about the size of my fist, and had the look of glass or perhaps polished crystal. The four stars imbedded within its interior seemed to glow with their own faint light. All and all, it was a remarkably tacky object. When I only looked at it, Goku nudge the cushion closer to me with his knuckles.

I was not certain as to what he expected from me. Did he mean it as a gift? "It's very… shiny," I said. "What is it?"

"It's a _ball_," Aiken said, watching it raptly.

"Yeah," Goku said, "That's right. A Dragon Ball.

"Gohan," he said, "can you go upstairs and get the others? They're in the dresser in the spare room."

"Sure," he said, and hopped up. Gohan left the room, and a moment later I heard his feet thudding up a staircase overhead.

Aiken started to get up to claim his empty spot, but I told her, "Aiken. Stay." Better to have her there than any of the others. If she moved Goku might take it into his head to sit near me. He had no concept of boundaries.

Gohan returned a minute later with a drawstring bag, which he handed over to Goku, who opened the sack and drew out a series orbs nearly identical to the first. He placed them on the table one by one, until there were five in total. One attempted to roll away, and Aiken reached out and snatched it up before it could fall to the floor. She held it up to her face and sniffed it.

Sometimes being associated with Aiken was entirely too mortifying.

"It took me a while to find my Grandpa's last time," he said. "So we only need to get the last two before we're all set."

"Set for what?"

"To call the Dragon," he said, in a tone that seemed to suggest that he felt I was being remarkably and deliberately slow about something.

"For the love of – " Juunanagou began, then paused, derailed by his own ire. He still stood in the doorway, seemly disinclined toward coming closer, but he had since straigten. The Saiyajin watched him, puzzled, waiting expectantly for further information. "You sound like you're babbling nonsense. They can't read your mind, you know."

"Furiza knew all about the Dragon Balls," Goku said.

"Do I look like Furiza to you?" I demanded, sharper then I meant. When silence grew on, stinging and overly long, I said, "No, of course I do not." Then I explained, "I was neither privy to nor interested in Furiza's hobbies." The Saiyajin turned the same questioning look he'd given Juunanagou on me. It should come as no surprise that he's too stupid to understand anything. There's no point in even trying to explain myself to any of them. "You will need to start from the beginning," I told him.

"Oh, okay." He lined the orbs up by the number of stars each held. "Dragon Balls, see? That's the One Star Ball, because it only has the one start. And this is the Two Star Ball. I don't have the Three Star Ball yet, but this one had four of 'em. My Grandpa left the Four Star to me. He got stepped on, and he died –"

"We're not immortal," Juunanagou cut in. "You lot aren't, at any rate."

"What'd you want, Juunanagou?"

"Wouldn't you love to know," he said. When the Saiyajin frowned, Juunanagou said, "Hurry. It. Up."

"You tell it, then."

"Gladly," Juunanagou said. "Those are the Dragon Balls. There's seven of them in total –"

"I said that already."

"Would you shut up? The Dragon Balls were made by a Namekjin –"

"The Namekjin we saw earlier?" I asked. Juunanagou turned and glared at me. I didn't like it - everything he did seemed to carry some vague threat – but in some backwards way he seemed under the Saiyajin's protection, and I didn't dare rebuke him.

"Sort of," Goku said.

"No," Juunanagou said, and tried to start again. Aiken spoke before he could.

"We saw a Namekjin. Didn't we, Uragiru?"

"Aiken, we all saw it," I told her.

"Not that one," she said. "Before. When we were getting supplies on… on Tsuminisei. I think that's what it was called, wasn't it? Furiza's Planet Number 54, I mean."

"Tsuminisei, yes," Uragiru said, in agreement about the planet's name, though not the rest.

"That's what they called it, anyway. But we saw a Namekjin there."

"No, you're mistaken," Uragiru told her. "That was a Makkajin." She said to the rest of us, "Poor Aiken, she's hopelessly color blind. Can't tell red from green."

"I can to!" Aiken said, though it has also been my experience that she had difficulties distinguishing some colors. She didn't mean to lie - she simply wasn't cognizant of her own limitations, as any good Inujin ought to be – but from there she quickly worked herself into a completely unacceptable lather. "Is that other Namekjin of yours a girl or a boy?" she demanded of the Saiyajin, as the mood throughout the room became vaguely embarrassed. "Because… because if you only have the two males, then maybe go get the other one, and maybe it'll be a girl, and then –"

Gods, but she was thick. How could she possible imagine that we might be traveling anywhere? She'd seen the bloody ship destroyed right before her eyes not two hours before.

"Aiken," I said.

"She's telling lies," Aiken said sullenly.

"Aiken."

"Frost would want to go fetch the Namekjin."

I closed my eyes. I kept my hands clutched together in my lap, because they'd be certain to act on their own accord if I set them free. "Aiken, if you ever speak to me like that again I will strike you dead. Do you understand me?"

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice suddenly rougher and much smaller than it had been. "Please don't be mad at me."

"It's all right," I said, but when I opened my eyes I found every face in the room save Aiken's turned hard against me.

"I cannot believe that you're going to waste the Dragon's power with this bullshit," Juunanagou said.

"Never mind," Goku said.

"Whatever. It won't work anyway."

"How come you –" Goku started, but then Chichi appeared in the doorway.

"Is everything okay in here?"

"It will be," Juunanagou said. He looked at me when he said it. "Real soon, it's going to be just great."

"Oh good," she said, and beamed at him. "Dinner's waiting."


	10. Chapter Ten: Aiken

_But suppose people are neither aware of any cherished values nor experience any threat? That is the experience of indifference, which, if it seems to involve all their values, becomes apathy. Suppose, finally, they are unaware of any cherished values, but still are very much aware of a threat? That is the experience of uneasiness, of anxiety, which, if it is total enough, becomes a deadly unspecified malaise. - _- The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills

**Aiken **

I'm not anything close to smart, but I do know a Namekjin when I smell one. I ought to. I spent enough time around them back when I was littler, back in the bad old days.

I wasn't wanted. I was my Mistress's - Frost had seen to that - but she didn't want me. She wanted her old guards back, faithless though they'd shown themselves to be. When Furiza got wind of how strong those two were, and asked them if they wouldn't rather work for him instead, Butta and Jeice had jumped at the offer without so much as backward glance or a by your leave for my Mistress. As the years went by we'd hear about them every now and then; they were just having a great old time, making asses of themselves in public while showboating their way through the dirtiest of work. The universe's deadliest, lamest joke.

I wasn't there then, so I couldn't say if it was ambition or fear that led them to jump so quickly when Furiza called. Frost told the story differently than Uragiru did, and my Mistress saw it a third way. The important thing wasn't why they'd been so fast to turn away from her, but that Furiza had taken them. "It's beyond tolerance," she told Frost again, not a week after he'd first brought me on to the ship. "He squanders his talent pool, and robs me of my own when he finds that he's come up short."

They'd been great finds, those two. Butta and Jeice. Because they were mutants, and that meant that they were really - really - strong. That sort of strong rarely came natural, not to most races. The trick was to find the couple-few mutants who were really worth something from among the billions of no accounts. My Mistress's family was always looking.

Way back then Frost had been well, but there still hadn't been much bulk to him. He was all lank and length and sharp corners, and when he spread out across the furniture he sprawled in all directions. He was off ship so often - down on one planet or another, where daytime kept its own hours - that he never slept regular. I'd hear him walking the halls at night, bypassing the kitchen staff to raid the pantry or reading files in the bridge. He had been working on a nap when my Mistress spoke. His eyes came open slowly as he raised his head to look at her. "There's truth to what's being said, then?" he asked.

"I don't know anything more about it than you do," my Mistress said, and probably she knew even less than that. My Mistress made it her business not to know, but Frost always seemed to have heard about things before they'd even happened. Still, even he'd been blindsided when Vegetasei blew up.

But after a pause my Mistress scoffed, "An asteroid, _honestly_."

"It did seem exceedingly unlikely," Frost said.

My Mistress dropped down into her throne, folding her legs back neatly. From my place beside the great seat I watched her tail drape itself over the arm of the throne, its tip lashing. I was smaller then, barely taller than my Mistress, though some heavier, and sitting up there had still put her high above me. When I'd first come aboard I'd been afraid that her tail might hit me by mistake, but it hadn't taken too long to figure out that she was always aware of what it was doing, no matter what. Sometimes she might break things by accident, but never people. She didn't like to hit, and she never did hit me. My Mistress wasn't physical. Even when she killed she did it at a distance.

"It is an astonishingly uncreative lie," my Mistress said. She fidgeted discontentedly in the throne. Pressed a shoulder against its high back. Leaned forward, elbow on the armrest, jaw cradled in the back of her hand, knuckles against chin and cheek. Then she was up again, circling the room.

The Saiyajin were different from most races, because the Saiyajin were almost always passable strong - not mutant strong, but strong enough to come in awful handy when you had a lot of them. Nobody had liked the Saiyajin - they were stupid proud, near impossible to work with, and notorious for turning on their comrades - but they'd do dirty work and they'd do it willingly and on the cheap, and that had made them deadly useful. Most everyone agreed that Furiza had put them down, but nobody really understood why, and that made my Mistress horribly nervous. She didn't like it when he did senseless or unexpected things. Nobody did. Everybody liked to pretend that they were special or needed or well-liked, and that that made them safe, but nobody could ever really know with someone as changeable as he was.

"He'll never be able to keep pace with Koola without the Saiyajin working the front for him," she said grimly. "And I'll be the one to suffer for it when he begins to feel ineffectual."

Frost was still for a moment. When he spoke again it was to turn the conversation back to its original topic. "I understand that Butta and Jeice have been recruited by Ginyu. Isn't that true?" He looked to Uragiru for confirmation.

"That's the word," Uragiru had said. Back then, Uragiru had known nearly everyone who was important enough to be worth knowing, and that was useful because all of them were forever telling her things. That ended after the Super Saiyajin came - everyone who'd been important when Furiza was alive died on Nameksei or soon after - but Frost kept her anyway. Frost liked her. "Sauza has Ginyu in a rage," she went on. "He's come up with two new men who aren't to be believed. Rumor has it that they're not just a match for anyone Ginyu has, but better than Ginyu himself. "

"Of course," my Mistress had snapped. "They divide the best between themselves and leave me with the dregs. As ever it's been." Back then my Mistress had been like a thing meant to prowl locked in too small a cage. Her talent for spite was astonishing, her rages unpredictable and directed at ever shifting targets. There was a lot of space outside the ship - all the space there was - but she was trapped just the same, and the rest of us with her. I was an irritant, and stayed out of the way as best as I knew how. I didn't want to make things any harder for her than they already were.

I knew that it was best if I stayed quiet. I knew that, but I couldn't help it. "I'll be stronger than they ever were," I promised her. "I'll work harder than they even knew how, and I'll be stronger, and one's going to ever be able to take me away because I'll just lay down and die first." Then - stupid, tripping over my own earnest tongue - I said, "I'll be the strongest one that there is."

Frost winced. Uragiru's eyes got wider than I thought they could. She raised a hand to her mouth, then dropped it back to her side quickly and went flat faced.

My Mistress came to a sudden stop in front of the port window, her shoulders drawing together as the muscles in her neck went rigid. She was still for a long time, and everyone else was still with her, waiting to see what she would do. I didn't know what to do, and tried to catch someone's eye so I could be told, but Frost was focused completely on my Mistress, and Uragiru wouldn't look at me. I'd lost all my words and couldn't find a one of them. My Mistress's head turned toward me very slowly. "Never," she said, her voice low and strained and dangerous, "Never say anything like that again."

"I didn't mean stronger than you," I rushed to say. "Not that."

I wanted her attention. I wanted to be told what to do - what she needed me to do for her - so that I could do it and do it well so that she would see that I had done it well for her. But when she looked at me it was hard not to shake. I was a frustration and a burden to her, too young and too senseless do anything right. Seeing me twisted her up with a dozen contradictory impulses, more thoughts and feelings than I had names for. I didn't mean to - I never meant to - but somehow I made her feel bad about herself. The relief when she turned away was disappointing and empty.

But I did get stronger than Butta and Jeice were, though by then both of them were long dead. I fought everything that I could get to fight me, and I damn near kicked it a few times when things got too hot, but I got stronger than anyone ever thought I could rightly get. Frost always thought I'd be something, but I think I surprised him, too. It took years and years, but I did it. I don't lie, not to my Mistress.

When my Mistress spoke again it only left me more confused about where I'd gone wrong. "You are a walking invitation for manufactured insult," she said. "Under no circumstances will you allow yourself to be seen by him. Do you understand me?" I didn't know much, but I knew who _he_ was alright. Nobody didn't. I nodded, though it seemed very wrong to me that she should be left to face a clear threat alone.

My Mistress had turned her back again. She drew her tail close, coiling it around her ankles. Drew herself into herself. Drew away from the rest of us. There was something scary about it, so much more frightening than any display of tempter or pique. Behind me, I heard Frost move to his feet. Out the corner of my eye I saw Uragiru take two short steps backward. They weren't stupid, not either of them. If she could pull herself that far away from us – from him – then there was always the chance that she just wouldn't come back. Frost did as he did, but there was never nothing that said that we'd be able to keep her with us. She was so good at making herself not care.

"I have been in error," she said. "I should have brought his attention to those men immediately upon realizing their talent. I will need to make it up to him." The ship back then had been the sort with the big, outwardly bulging windows. Tinted, they reflected her face back distorted, but there wasn't anything there that I could read. The rest of the universe had been frozen out. She didn't turn to look at Frost when said, "If you wish to keep your Namekjin you need to relocate them immediately."

When Frost stiffed his spine he gained half a foot's height. His expression was as carefully fixed and flat as my Mistress's, but he wasn't nearly as good at hiding things away as she was. He shook. There was never any question that he cared for my Mistress, but sometimes I think maybe he wished that he didn't have to. Sometimes he wanted to hit her, she made him so angry. If he ever had I would have killed him. He would have been dead before he knew that he was dying. His commitment to every sorry case he ran across might have pulled in a hundred different ways, but I only had one priority. "That isn't…" he began, and then, stymied in his attempts to find a gracious way to argue by some urgency, he just said, "No."

It was not a right thing to say – it wasn't given to him to tell her "no," not in matters of state, not back then – but it knocked her back down with us. It left her blinking uneasily, caught between shock and anger, but when she spoke she did so lightly, as though it were a thing of little importance. "I should have thought you'd be pleased with the choice; the matter's bloodless enough. The creatures are few in number. You should be able to remove the lot without difficulty."

"I need that planet," he said.

Planets were a point of annoyance for my Mistress. It mystified and annoyed her that her family and Frost were so interested in entangling themselves in the lives of deaths of so many worlds and races. Caught off balance by his continued resistance, she tried again to make the thing frivolous. "What wish could you possibly have for a planet like that one?"

Her back was still to them. Frost looked ready to speak – he lifted a hand, then paused, indecisive. Uragiru caught his eye, and when he tilted his head to look down at her she shook her own emphatically. Frost smiled to reassure her; she was not comforted. She looked at him with tight-jawed horror, her head still going back and forth.

Turn around, I wanted to say. You're missing something important. But I didn't dare it. My Mistress never saw anything she didn't wish to see, and she never wanted to see anything that she couldn't hope to control. Frost and Uragiru had their hands in so much, and my Mistress turned a willfully blind eye to all their projects.

"There's the operative word," he began. "The Namekjin-"

"Oh never mind if you're going to make a lecture out of it," she said with airy indifference. Back then worlds fell like pieces on a game board. It wasn't a game that my Mistress could hope to win – the deck was stacked so that Furiza would always win and he would win by just as many pieces as he wanted to – so she opted out. She didn't play. Frost could have his little tries, because Frost was inconspicuous and beneath notice anyway, and because Frost knew how to lose. But my Mistress refused to allow herself to become attached to anything that would only be taken for her in the next round.

"The thing's entirely too perverse," she said, teasing him now, trying to make a small joke out of the thing so it could be put aside. There was so much that could have gotten between my Mistress and Frost if they had allowed it, so much mistrust and misunderstanding. Frost would put it aside, and my Mistress would simply pretend that it wasn't there. But ignored, smoothed over, denied, it was still a fact; they had almost nothing in common. "All the time you've been spending down there with those mud hut primitives. You'll catch something if you aren't more careful."

Frost had gone crazy for those greenies when he finally found them, and had personally put a huge amount of work into taming them down. Teaching natives to speak proper was usually the duty of field academics, but on Nameksei Frost hadn't wanted to bring in anyone else. It was just him and Uragiru, and the two of them would be down there for days at a time. Sometimes I went too, when my Mistress was especially fed up with me having me underfoot. They weren't bad people, those Namekjin – there were always a few that were game for a spar, and their kids were just as cute as cute came – but talking like that was beneath Frost and Uragiru both. It wasn't right that they lowered themselves to speaking the Namekjin tongue – _they_ should have been speak like _us_ – but Frost wouldn't have a translator between himself and them. It didn't take long before he and Uragiru and all the Namekjin were speaking a mishmash of the two tongues, but Frost didn't stop until there was fluency in both directions. He didn't want any misunderstandings between himself and the Namekjin.

The matter of Nameksei didn't end there, though it would have if Frost had been acting reasonable. Frost was almost always the one to blink first when he and my Mistress locked horns, but he got his way with Nameksei in the end, for all the good it did him. Whatever he'd been working at, it didn't end the way he'd wanted. He and Uragiru came back from their last extended stay on Nameksei drained and dejected and very, very quiet.

And that was the last that I heard of Nameksei, until a good twenty-five years later, when Furiza himself went there. No one really knew what happened while he was on Nameksei, because Furiza was the only one who lived to tell, and Furiza was a liar. He lied all the time. He lied about what happened to Vegetasei, and he lied about killing Prince Vegeta, because Vegeta's here on Earth with Son Goku.

He couldn't have not known that we'd been there before him. Frost had left his mark all over the planet, in the novelties and bits of tech he'd given the Namekjin to get on their good side, and in the memories of the Namekjin themselves. How else would they know our language unless someone had been there to teach them? The Namekjin men were big and fierce as demons, but the women were small and squat and wrinkly, and nowhere near as bold. All of them would do anything to ensure the safety of their children. Getting the Namekjin to tell everything would have been as simple as just making one of the little guys scream loud enough.

So Furiza knew that Frost was there before him, and that Frost had known about something that Furiza would have wanted long before Furiza found out about it on his own, but Frost hadn't said. Frost had kept it secret, so Furiza didn't get the thing either, but he did get hurt bad in the process of trying. So that was Frost's fault because he hadn't told what he knew. And that made it my Mistress's fault, too, as little as she'd actually had to do with any of it, because Frost was hers. So after Nameksei blew up we were on the run, and we were in hiding, and we had to be very careful for a long time. Until we could be sure that all three of them were dead and gone.

Frost and my Mistress were so worried that the Super Saiyajin wasn't finished, that he'd come looking for her and who knew what else, that it was a long time before they noticed how much better things had gotten between them.


	11. Chapter Eleven: Frigid

_The great civilizer on earth seems to have been doubt. Doubt, the constantly debated and flexible inner condition of uncertainty, the wish to believe in balance with rueful or nervous or grieving skepticism, seems to have held people in thrall to ethical behavior, while the true believers, of whatever stamp, have done the murdering. - _E.L. Doctorow

_It's a mad house. - _Charlton Heston

**Frigid**

Would that there was some comfort in hating Son Goku, but to do so did me not the slightest bit of good, and - worse, to be so ineffectual - in no way touched him. The Super Saiyajin was as impervious to hatred as he was to blows; it breezed past him, unheeded, unacknowledged, uncomprehended. I should try to leave off it as best I can. There's no profit in it.

Juunanagou hated him. He hated them all, but Son Goku he hated especially. He seethed and raged with hate for them, and that hate crawled under his skin and made his eyes wild and too bright, but he's only gnawing at his own liver. They hardly took notice, but - undeterred - still the boy slighted them at every opportunity. When Son's wife Chichi announced to the gathered crowd that dinner was ready, Juunanagou was at the head of the resulting press as the mob rushed toward the dining area, and for a brief time I lost sight of him.

I stood too soon, but once standing I was caught in the press, compelled to move at the thong's pace. Aiken loomed over me, casting threatening glares to ward off those who crowded too close in the narrow hallway. I was not at all certain that she understood the severity of our situation, and when her lower lip peeled back at the approach of Son Goten I hissed sharply, "Aiken, do nothing without my leave."

The crowd fanned out upon entering the kitchen, vying for favored positions at the table and debating who ought to be seated next to whom, but Juunanagou was no longer among them. He'd taken a chair from the table and moved it into an empty corner, and now he sat backwards on said chair, legs straddling the seat, arms dangling negligently over its back. Would that I'd thought of it first, but then I'm beholden to at least play at gracious. The chairs that ringed the oval-shaped table were all the same as the one Juunanagou had, high-backed, with no space to accommodate a tail such as my own. So, trying to be pragmatic - but did no one stop to _think_? - I turned a chair to put the back to my right-hand side, and sat.

I'd lost track of Uragiru, but my Aiken - ever attentive, ever overeager - hadn't strayed. When I motioned her down into the seat at my left hand she dropped quickly to perch on the edge of the chair, bulk poised on the balls of her feet - wherever have her boots gotten to? - eyes intent on tracking the movements of each and every one of the Saiyajin's people. Well, and I'd hurt her feelings, so now she was overcompensating - quite the feat, as Aiken was nothing if not overzealous - showing herself to be vigilant and on alert. She must understand that there's little danger here now, and that she and I both would be completely incapable of countering any threat that might yet develop, but I suppose that was beside the point. Where she asked, I doubt that she could have said just what it was that she had done wrong, yet she wanted so badly to be forgiven. Well, and I wish I hadn't spoken to her so sharply, but perhaps now she's done second-guessing me for the interim.

If there is a way to drive her into the Saiyajin's care, cruelty won't do it. If it were possible to make her hate me, the gods know that she would have turned against me decades ago. Time was too short for me to pretend that I was good to her in those early years after she'd first came to me.

Yes, but I'd never asked that I should be burdened with such a dependent young whelp - still stinking of milk but already taller than myself, always in the way, always underfoot, declaring her undying devotion to me seven times a day, when all I wanted was for her to stop leaving fur behind everywhere she went. An opponent might lay her cheek open to the bone or blister half the hide for her arm, and she'd hardly seem to notice, but if I so much as looked at her crossly then would come the wounded cringe, the whimper bit back because she knew I hated the sound, the desperate gambits to win my forgiveness. The harsher I was the harder she tried to please me. How could I possibly be expected to measure up to such expectations?

The entire business was blatant manipulation on Frost's part. Bringing the child onto my ship when he very well know that I had no wish for any such thing, making her mine before I'd even been told of her existence, and then there was nothing for it but to keep her, because she wouldn't be anyone's but mine after that. Aiken never had any say in it - untold generations of careful breeding had left no other path opened to her, poor thing.

Frost had any number of sensible sounding excuses for what he'd done - he always did - but the fact of the matter was that he'd willfully and deliberately gone behind my back and against my wishes. He wasn't so clever that I couldn't see what he was trying to do to me. He'd made a gamble, one loyal little life hostage to the hope that, bad as I could be back then, I was not far enough gone to destroy something that claimed to love me, no matter how trying she was. But then, he'd bet more than Aiken against my ability to find some way to be decent. There were times - when he overplayed his advantage or tried to force my hand or when he refused to let go of a topic that needed to be dropped - when I came so close to just… Well. Those were different times.

As vexing as she'd made herself these last few hours, I would have rather had Uragiru seated beside me than one of the Saiyajin's people, but she couldn't be depended upon for even that much. By the time she trailed her way into the dining room Son Goten had already placed himself at my right side, and I could think of no socially acceptable way to get rid of him.

Uragiru was with Yamcha - or perhaps he was with her - as they crossed through the doorway, walking closer to the human than their whispered conversation warranted. When he spoke she tipped her head upwards by just the smallest degree to watch him. As they slipped into empty chairs across the table from myself she brushed the side of his arm with her hand, as though by accident. For his part the human seemed astonished by his good fortune, bumbling and flushed - well, and one can't expect anything better of a primate; it's well known that that type only ever have one thing in mind. It was hard for me to believe that she could be sincerely interested in him, but if it was an act it was a good one. I could not remember the last time she'd seemed so light and airy.

Son Gohan had taken the seat on Goten's other side, and had shifted his chair around to engage Juunanagou in his corner in some obscure topic of debate. It was hard to follow anything that this group had to say - they mentioned the oddest, most confounding things in passing, and never did it occur to them to explain themselves. But it seemed that the boy had been missing - in hiding? - for a number of years. Gohan wheedled at him with leading questions, but received only insults and vulgarities for his trouble. That one was dedicated to being a complete and utterly childish brat.

Watching him brought something to mind, and I turned to Goten. "Has there been an Icejin boy here? A boy, or else a young man?"

"Icejin?" he repeated, brows wrinkling. Even if I knew nothing else about the pair, I believed that I would be able to recognize this one as Son Goku's boy; the strain of thinking provokes in the both of them the very same pained expression. "I dunno."

"His name may have been Kuriezer," I prompted.

"I thought it was Kureeza?" Aiken offered. "Wasn't that his name…" Son Goku dropped into the empty seat beside her, and she trailed off, watching him. The others made her suspicious, but she seemed to have taken to the Super Saiyajin. I didn't understand it, but it gave me some hope that I might be successful in my goal.

Uragiru glanced away from Yamcha long enough to shake her head at Aiken, so she wasn't as oblivious to the rest of us as she might pretend. "More commonly it's said to have been 'Kuriza.'"

"Kuriza," I said, and then repeated, "Has he been here?"

Son Goten leaned over the table, elbows and palms splayed across its surface, to look around myself and Aiken. "Dad. Hey, Dad!" he called down the table, and Son Goku's face appeared around Aiken's bulk. "Was there a kid like her here before?"

"She's looking for her kid?"

"_No_," I said, emphatically. "No. Not mine. A nephew. I mean to say, that it's _possible _that he _may _be my nephew, _if _he even exists. Which I doubt. But have you seen him?"

I would not have thought it a difficult question, but Son Goku gave it his full and lengthy consideration before answering. "No, I don't remember anyone like that being here."

"I hadn't thought it likely." Rumors of the boy had only begun after Furiza himself was dead and gone, a wide-eyed and vicious child, lost or hidden away on some backwoods planet for reasons that none of the tale-tellers could agree upon, then forgotten in the chaos that followed his father's death. That Furiza might have had a child seemed unlikely enough, to say the least, and the fact that the boy had failed to surface, despite all inquires, made the matter seem even more doubtful. Almost certainly he was only the invention of some imaginative fool, just a story that had taken on shades of life through retelling by those too gullible to tell reality from fiction.

Children are a horrid risk; there's no telling what kind of little monster you might hatch. I've never dreamed of chancing it.

The Saiyajin and his people had no such qualms. With a tumultuous noise their many children returned back inside. They flooded the kitchen, gangs and packs and crowds of children, darting and watchful, cranky and silly and wild and willful and shy. Some displayed obvious Saiyajin blood in their bristly black hair, but with others it was harder to judge if they were crosses or simply common human young. They rushed through the kitchen doors in a scramble, then began to emerge again in pairs and groups a few moments later, plates heaped with food balanced in their hands. In concession to the limited space in the dinning room they dispersed, many turning down the hallway toward the living room, while some went back outside to eat, and still others could be heard running up the steps overhead to the upstairs.

A pair of half-grown boys bung back, watching Aiken and myself. Nearly of a height, one had blue and the tannish-colored skin that seemed most common among these people, while the other was a darker shade of golden brown and black-haired. They elbowed and shoved one another, each feeding off the antics of the other to work up the confidence for some bold action. Beside me, Aiken stiffened and drew her upper lip back to flash her teeth as the couple slid closer. Again I whispered, "Do nothing," even as I drew my tail under the table, suspicious that their intent was to yank it.

The smallish man - Kuririn, he's called - had returned inside with the children, and now he slipped by, sweeping the pair into the kitchen ahead of him as he pasted. He reemerged quickly, a platter bearing a roast boar which must have outweighed him held over his head. Chichi was directly behind him, with a similarly gigantic double burdened of rice and greens.

"I gotta go help," Goten told me, jumping up. Son Goku had already got to his feet. "Come on," Goten said to Gohan, tugging his brother's clothing as he passed by, but that one was engrossed in his discussion with Juunanagou, and only fluttered his hand vaguely in response as the other two went on into the kitchen without him.

"No, but why'd he bring the medicine?" Juunanagou was demanding of Gohan. "Why didn't he just tell you guys to wish that Son had good health, or something like that?"

The question seemed to mean something to Gohan, at least, because he considered it seriously before saying, "They didn't have the dragon balls in the timeline that Trunks-from-the-Future grew up in." He said it - _Trunks-from-the-Future _- as though it were all one word, a name or an indispensable title, and seemed prepared to build on the thought when Juunanagou cut him off.

"Yeah, hey, that's right. No Piccolo, no dragon balls, yeah? So let me ask you, what do you think; You figure it was me that killed Piccolo in that timeline, or was it Juuhachigou?" His sister, I noticed, had not returned inside with her husband.

The others continued to make trip after trip from the kitchen, piling the table with stacks of dishes and platters piled high with dozens of different dishes. Heaps of raw greens and steamed vegetables, mountains of rice, cut fresh fruit stacked in artistic formations half a meter high. Jugs of water and pitchers of juices, and little dried gourds filled with some liquid that smelled of fermentation. Fish and fowl by the dozens, and all of it arranged around that giant pig.

"The dragon balls are not the point," Juunanagou said, when Gohan failed to rise to his strange bait.

"What is your point?" Gohan asked, evenly enough considering Juunanagou's tone. It's hard to understand why they don't at least have him beaten.

The dishes kept piling up, with each trip into the kitchen the four of them returned with more and more and more, until scarcely a square centimeter of the table's surface was left visible. I had heard it said that Saiyajin were large eaters, but surely…

When Goten sat back down I leaned over to ask him softly, "Are you expecting additional guests?"

"I hope not," he said, his brow wrinkling. "Mom knew that the kids were coming over and all, but she wasn't planning on feeding this many people…"

Juunanagou's voice was getting louder, and as Goku and the others settled back around the table more people were starting to take notice. Even Uragiru was watching him now. "Look - does the dragon ever kill?"

"No," Gohan said. "No, of course not. The Dragon wouldn't kill anyone." He waited for Juunanagou to go on, but Juunanagou didn't seem to think it worth the effort.

Kuririn had taken a seat on one side of Son Goku, and Chichi the one on the other side, between Goku and Gohan. She leaned over to take Gohan's plate for him, piling it high while Goku and Goten reached across the table to take what they wanted, oblivious to the tension.

"Where'd Juuhachigou go?" Chichi asked Kuririn.

"She had a headache," Kuririn said, flatly, in what was obviously a polite lie. "She went home."

If Juunanagou heard him, he didn't react. He was still waiting, watching Gohan with intent distain. "I don't understand how that's relevant," Gohan said at last.

"The Dragon doesn't kill," Juunanagou again.

"Right."

"He doesn't help people kill."

"Right."

"And the Dragon won't alter the basic nature of any living thing."

"Right."

"And you're supposed to be the smart one?"

"Ri-" Gohan began, then paused when he realized the rhetorical nature of the question.

"Are germs alive?"

"Hm," Gohan said.

Juunanagou said, "Ha."

"You might have a point," Gohan conceded thoughtfully, but went on to add, "But you're just assuming that the trouble is infectious in nature. It might just as easily be a hundred different things." It was only when he turned to look at me that I realized that their conversation had anything to do with me. "Well?" Gohan prompted, as forward as that, and then they were all watching me, even Son Goku was watching me, the leg of some large fowl gripped in his fist halfway between mouth and plate.

"It's not so easy to get a diagnosis," I said, and wished without hope that they would know enough to leave the topic there.

"Needles," Son Goku said gravely, and he shuddered.

"Needles," I heard myself agree. Yes, needles and tests and tissue samples, and none of it ever easily gotten. Potions and poultices and scores of different drugs. Twenty different specialists with their specialized teams and special equipment, healers and mystics and backwoods wise women. Nothing ever pinned down, let alone properly treated. Frost had been everywhere - he'd been a hundred different worlds, some of which no longer even existed - and his health had never been ideal. He might have been carrying something for years without ever realizing it. It could have been anything.

"So you aren't sure?" Son Gohan pressed.

"I am not."

"Right. So we'll just call the Dragon and ask him about it, and if that doesn't work we'll go from there…"

"Oi," Goten said, tapping his brother on the forearm with the back of his hand excitedly. "What about Dende?"

"Hm," Gohan said again. Hands were again reaching across the table for the various bowls and platters; I took what was handed to me, passed what they motioned for. "I don't think he'd appreciate being brought into this. Into this sort of situation, I mean."

"Oh yeah," Goten said. "I didn't think of that."

They have no concept of how exhausting they are. "Could someone tell me - please - what is a dragon?"

"A dragon is a sort of minor god, I guess you'd say," Gohan told me, but at the same time Goten was saying, "It's like a lizard. A big, big, big, grumpy old lizard. Way bigger than a dinosaur."

And together they said, "He grants wishes," though Gohan added the stipulation, "Within certain limits."

But at the same time, Uragiru said, "It's a fraud."

Well, and of course it is - it's madness along the same vein as Juunanagou and Gohan's bickering over other timelines and alternate selves. It's a common sort of madness, one that the entire company appears to suffer from, but that makes it no less mad. But one shouldn't say that. "Uragiru, don't argue with your hosts," I tell her - pointedly. Better not to question the powers of their whatever-it-is lizard thing, not when we're marooned here, so entirely dependent upon their largess. This planet is three-quarters savage and the rest is backwards - aside from the Saiyajin's people do any of the natives even know our language? - and it would be no easy thing to go out and find a way to make a different place for myself, however temporary. I haven't the energy for it, and I've no hope for Aiken if I can't make things here work for her. If Uragiru causes us to be turned out -

Uragiru ignored me completely. Astounding. "It's that damn Namekjin trick, isn't it?" she said, "All over again."

"You guys know about them already, then?" Gohan said.

"I know all about them," Uragiru said. "Those two know nothing about anything. Aiken can't help it, but _she's_ ignorant by choice."

"Uragiru," I warned, for the moment too astonished to do aught else. Well, and I shouldn't be surprised it that one takes advantage of the situation to step out of line. She'd been getting away with more than she ever should been allowed for years now. Frost would cover for her, make excuses for her when she behaved badly, and I let it pass for his sake, though it wasn't right that he should be so attached to her. Too often Frost would speak to her or of her as a brother - as a good brother - might a sister. But she should remember that he's not here anymore, and I am not dead yet.

Still, she continues to behave as though I were not here. "I know about them," she said again. "They're effectively useless. The dragon can only grant petty and pointless little wishes."

"I don't know about that," Gohan said, nearly apologetically. Despite myself, I was beginning to get a sense of these people. I could see his father in him now, as clearly as I'd seen it in Goten; Gohan's cleverer than his sire, yes, but he had the same open expression, waiting hopefully to see if Uragiru would stop being angry soon. "The dragon balls have brought a lot of people back to life for us."

"Right. Three wishes gets you three lives, once a year. What good is that? What bloody use are three lives when _they _were killing billions every week?"

I knew that _they_ meant, all its inflections dripping blame, though I never would have believed that she'd dare to turn it loose on me. They must have all heard it, too; I expected to be singled out, fingered, blamed for the whole stupid senseless vile mess. But I won't be implicated in something I never could have controlled. I reached for an excuse. I could lie, I could say, "I never did," but not even the people of Son Goku could be foolish enough to believe that. The truth was too shameful - too weak - to have known. Uragiru's already told too much.

I didn't want to know. I deliberately refused to see. Frost saw. Frost went looking to see, and Frost never slept a night through.

Uragiru was still talking, intent on telling these strangers all - more, it seemed, than Frost ever cared to tell me - though Gohan was trying to slip a word in edgewise. "We tried so hard. Just tracking down the rumors and finding the planet itself was hard enough, and then it took another year just to learn the language. We jumped through every hoop that fat old Namekjin wanted, did everything it asked. By the time we found out how limited the dragon balls were, how inflated their powers had become in retelling it was too late to give it up.

"Frost thought he could find some way around the rules. Like, if he just found the right wording for his request he could slip something through, but when we finally called the Dragon he wouldn't help. It didn't matter what we said, or how hard Frost tried to explain that something needed to be done to stop them, all the dragon did was roar at us to make an acceptable wish and leave him alone. Frost wheedled and argued and pleaded for hours. 'Make them weak. Make them feel whatever they do to others. Give me a weapon or a poison or a cell I can lock them in. Make them biddable or gentle or catatonic.' But it was nothing but a waste of time."

"Them," I repeat, but I think, Us? Them and I also? "Explain yourself," I demanded, and found myself on my feet.

Uragiru stood as well. "I won't," she said, and when Yamcha reached for her arm she smacked it away. "If you're that stupid it isn't worth it. _You_ were never worth it. I told him -

"You're over with. This is all going to be over with very soon."

"I'm over with? You don't understand your situation. You're only still alive because we're guests here, and I've better manners than to foul my host's dinner table." I looked to Son Goku. "May we be excused?"

Quickly, Gohan said, "Dad - say 'No.'"

Son Goku scowled down at his plate. "I'm just trying to eat, and you guys are bothering everybody an' being loud and all, so why don't you just sit down an' eat or something?"

Wonderful; now she's made him cross. There will be consequences for this. I sat quickly, and saw that Uragiru was wise enough at least to do the same. She glared at me from across the table, but I didn't give her the satisfaction of responding. I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap, and I looked at my plate, and into the wrinkled and cracked face of the boar. I was expected to eat - better to keep the Saiyajin happy - but could no longer imagine doing so.

Looking at that boar I remembered something they used to say about the Saiyajin. They used to say that the Saiyajin were cannibals, that they would eat absolutely anything they could kill, ill regardless as to whether it was a person or any animal. It didn't make any difference. They did not care. The pig is an animal, so similar in form to animals found on any number of words as to be easily recognizable, and it was well dead, although it felt to me as though it were watching me from behind its closed eyelids. But - the thought took me before I could put it safely out of mind - what was done with the bodies, after the Saiyajin killed Furiza and Father? There were still teeth in that boar's mouth. I could see them around the curl of its charred lips.

"But you know," Gohan interjected into the long silence, "out dragon balls are a little different from the old version the Namekjin used to have. Ours can bring back as many people as we want, as long as they haven't been dead for more than a year. That was how we brought all the Namekjin back after… after the planet blew up, and -"

"Don't tell them about New Nameksei!" Juunanagou shouted suddenly.

Gohan, his temper sparking at last, snapped, "_I_ didn't."

I ran Gohan's words through my head again, then looked to Uragiru and saw that she'd heard the same thing I had, and had put the pieces together just as quickly. She was rigid in her chair beside Yamcha, blinking rapidly but otherwise completely still. The human stared at her, suddenly frightened. "Hey," Yamcha said to her, "hey," and when she didn't answer he picked up one of her hands and enveloped it between his own. "She's shaking," he said, and looked up, looked for help. "Hey, you guys, she's shaking."

I didn't know what to say. Frost might have known the right words - if there were words that could patch so monstrous a mistake, the gentle words that were needed now - but I did not. But, gods help me, I tried. "It's over with," I told her. "It's over with, and there's nothing for it now. You will have to try to let it go."

She did no seem to hear me. "You wished all the Namekjin Furiza killed back to life?" she said, and watched Gohan nod without seeming to see it. "Only the Namekjin? Just them?"

Son Gohan is no fool; he sees, and his chopsticks slip between his fingers and fall to the floor with a faint clicking as the implications slither up on him. Kuririn sees it as well, and bites his lower lip as his hide turns three shades lighter. Yamcha sees, and forgets his shyness to reach over and drape his arms around Uragiru. In his corner behind me, Juunanagou hisses, "Oh fuck," and so he's seen as well.

Uragiru lurched to her feet, throwing Yamcha back into his seat. She stepped back, taking in the entire room with wild eyes, her hands clenched into fists at her side. "To hell with you all," she said, and then she was gone, down the hall and out the front door, and in the silence that had struck the room I heard the doorframe splinter in her wake.

Son Goku craned his head to look at the place where Uragiru had stood a moment before. He dug his fingers into the mass of hair at the back of his head and scratched pensively. "What's she so mad about?" he asked.

How to answer such a question? The things I could tell him might turn the youngest soul old, but it may be that I misjudge my own power; perhaps he lacks the imagination to understand what he unleashed on Nameksei. What happened there may have been only a small episode in the lives of these here, but for so many others - for trillions of others, for myself - what happened there had far reaching effect. Everything changed. For those my brother deemed a threat in the aftermath of his defeat, everything ended.

Kuririn had been careful to avoid any interaction with myself, tacitly dodging any acknowledgment of the strange and uncomfortable situation the Super Saiyajin had placed the both of us in, but he was watching me now. His wish was to guard the Son Goku from hurtful truths, the same way the Saiyajin protected him from myself, but he had no expectations of being able to do so, and so instead waited unhappily and fatalistically to see what I would say. How was it that the Saiyajin had managed to surround himself with so many loyal and good creatures, while there's none I could depend on aside from Aiken?

Kuririn gave his head a small half-pleading, half-angry shake, and I allowed him his way. And why shouldn't I? If, in his ignorance, Son Goku missed an opportunity to undo some of the worst of what had been done, I wouldn't be the one to hold him accountable. There were more pressing matters at hand than bad business forty years finished.

"You said," I began tentatively. "You said that the dragon can return the dead to life?"

"Sure," Goten said easily, and I would have asked an instant later - I would have begged, begged gladly if necessary, though never in my life had I lowered myself in such a way - but my mind was spinning so quickly with the thrill of hope, the prospect of not just a future, but a future that I could stand to face. I was still hunting for the words I needed when the Super Saiyajin corrected Goten.

"Uh-uh," he said. "The Dragon can't fix it if someone dies on their own." He ducked his head and muttered, "Sorry," before returning his attention to the plate in front of him.

How did he know? How could he know what happened, when he's hardly been out of my sight for a moment since we came here? Aiken and Uragiru would not have dared to tell him, and in any case have not had the opportunity. So how -

Where's the point in even wondering? The Saiyajin was inscrutable, in turns absurdly trusting and monstrously indifferent to the results of his trust, a friendly and kind creature who's only desire was an opponent strong enough to be worth beating the life from. There's nothing about him that makes sense. I don't want to have to look at him anymore.

Beside me, Aiken is twitchy with the desire to discuss the situation, though the relevant points seemed to have escaped her. "Uragiru -" she posited tentatively.

"Leave it alone," I said, and she fell silent again.

The meal drug on in near silence. Chopsticks clicking together, cups clinking against the edges of plates, chairs groaning as the Saiyajin shift their weight to reach across the table for another serving, again and again and again. There was no end to their appetites.

I heard a wheeze, breath caught and held back against the breather's will, and for a wild moment I was certain that when I looked up and across the table I would see Frost there, in the grip of one of his attacks but still alive, but instead I saw the Saiyajin, his hands clenched over his throat, and the rest of the table was up in a scrabble, crowding around him. "He's choking on something!" Kuririn declared, and no argued with him as he jumped into the air and brought himself level with Son Goku's shoulder blades, pounding on his back with an open palm, while Gohan slide across the table on his knees to get at an angle to try to catch hold of his father's bucking head. Dishes crashed to the floor, shards and fragments of glass skittering across the floor, while gobs of spilled food were smeared under the Saiyajin's feet.

"Dad," Son Gohan said forcefully, making a commendable effort to remain calm while Goku's reddened face began to take on a bluish tinge. "Dad. Dad - look at me. Look at me, Dad," he said, trying to open the man's jaws to look inside his mouth and find the obstruction that they all believed was there. Goku's hands crept up from his throat and Gohan pushed them down, out of the way, but they came up again to clutch at Gohan's own. From where I stood I could see the Saiyajin's eyes, bulging and tearing around the edges and confused and fearful as those of a lost child. Is it me? Did I cause this, somehow pass the thing on to him? I don't want - no one deserves this.

He lurched to his feet, pulling away from the others, turning his back on them, trying to get some room. It was all happening so quickly, so silently. Not three minutes had past since the thing began. Could the Super Saiyajin die so easily? He crumbled to the floor, and the thud when he hit rattled the dishes on the table. Jerked, rolled over and managed to gain his way to his knees but stopped there, forearms against the floor in the mess of gnawed bones and broken glass, face turned down and away from me, too near gone to even claw for breath.

It ended almost as quickly as it had begun, a sudden and explosive hacking, leveling off to gasping intakes of breath. After a minute Kuririn pulled Son Goku to his feet and sat him back in his chair. Chichi flew briefly into the kitchen, quickly returned with a moist towel. She brushed at the globs and smears of food that clung to his face and arms until Goku took the towel from her and did for himself. When he shook his head splinters of broken glass sprinkled from his hair.

Gohan and Kuririn shared a nervous glance, their eyes shying sideways toward me before returning to Son. Well, then. "Goku," Kuririn said, with forced, nervous joviality, "What've I told you? You gotta chew your food before you swallow it! Chew - then swallow, you get it?"

What nonsense was he playing at? "This may be a problem," I said. "It needs to be addressed."

'It was a fish bone," Kuririn said, sharp enough to leave even himself startled after he'd said it. He laughed, not at all convincingly, trying to force the joke, to suck out some of the fear that gripped the room. I couldn't say for a certainty that he was lying - if Son Goku expelled anything from his throat it's lost among the mess of picked bones, crushed fruit and broken glass that litter the floor. Nor did I understand who the lie was meant to protect. "Wasn't it a bone, Goku?"

"Yeah," Son Goku said, but he said it so weakly, his voice distant and foggy, that it was hard to judge if he'd even understood the question. I've no faith in the ability of men to admit that they are in trouble. When their bodies scare them they will deny reality for as long as they possibly can.

"Was it?" I said.

"Look," Kuririn said. "We'll get the dragon balls together, and then we'll just wish for good health for everyone here, like Juunanagou said we shoulda last time Goku was sick, and then we won't have to worry about what it was or wasn't. No problem."

I expected Juunanagou to argue, to reiterate the points he'd raised with Gohan earlier, but when I turned to look for him I found Juunanagou was gone.


	12. Chapter Twelve: Juunanagou

"_I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom." - Bob Dylan_

Juunanagou

There was a Bear behind the counter at the Inn, busy polishing glasses with a towel wrapped around the clawed finger of one massive paw. He looked up at me when I came through the doors, said, "Howdy."

I raised a hand in greeting to shut him up as I went past the bar, headed on for more interesting prey; the back of a blue-haired head, sticking out above the back of a shadowy corner booth near the rear of the Inn.

Bitch must have figured that if she put enough distance between herself and Son's house fast enough no one would be able to follow after, but she was dead wrong. Those girls might have had some awesome tech, but there's a hell of a lot that they didn't know they didn't know, and that included how to suppress their ki. There weren't many people out here in the boonies to begin with, but among the dimmer lights of animal and human ki Uragiru stood out like a beacon.

She thought she was clever, but I had her number. I had her all figured out.

Three miners and an Indian were sitting on at the bar, but near the back of the smoky room we were practically alone. Uragiru startled when I slipped into the booth across from her, a chain of emotions running quick across her face - shock then guilt then rage - before settling on a deliberate and distant sort of distain. At the same time her hands were working quickly and of their own volition, secreting something inside one palm and slipping under the edge of the table.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed at me, loud enough that the Bear turned to peer at us. She stood to leave. I reached across the table and caught her the forearm, gave her a little shove that knocked her back down into her seat, then settled back in myself.

She was smart enough to stay put, anyway, though she glared murder at me for making her do it. "You're Saiyajin," she spat at me.

I leaned back, folded my arms behind my head. "There's no cause for being insulting."

"How'd you find me here?" Her hands were still under the table.

I motioned at the untouched drink in front of her, seemly there as an excuse to occupy the table. There were rooms upstairs and I wondered if she'd already bought one. "How are you paying?"

"Did you see pockets on the Lady Frigid? I saw that I was adequately provisioned before I left the ship."

I glanced back at the sign that hung over the bar, a price list of how much gold dust it took to get a drink, a meal, a room, a girl. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a twitch of movement from under the table and turned back quickly. "How'd you know what sort of shiny to bring along?"

I was one of the last people on the planet that she should have been talking to, and she knew it, but I was also the only one who was pretending to even half-way listen. Longer a person held something in the harder it was to shut up when you ought to after you'd started spilling your guts, and that's why I never do.

That, and she was trying to distract me. "Most people are after the same stuff," she said, and her jewelry jangled when she shrugged. A strand of hair fell across her eyes, and she blew it back into place. "Anyway, this planet was surveyed a good fifty years ago. I just went back and looked at the old file again. We dug those records up years ago, back after Koola disappeared here, when we were trying to figure out what in the bloody hell had happened here.

"A lot of the data related to the Saiyajin operations got misplaced or went missing after Vegetasei was destroyed, but the stuff on Earth and the brat - Karrotto, the file named him - they'd shipped here was still in the system, except it had been misfiled." Below the table she was drawing her leg up, but her eyes were on me, waiting for the right moment to slip the thing she was hiding into her boot. "You, all of you" - the wave of her free hand took in myself, the customers at the bar, and everyone else everywhere - "are alive because of a clerical error."

"Imagine that."

"If Furiza had known that there was a stray Saiyajin brat here someone would have been sent to put him down before he was toddling, and they would have purge the planet at the same time. That was standard procedure. It happened all the time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. There were Saiyajin kids seeded all over the universe. You think he was just going to let them grow up? Not that the Saiyajin ever really meant for Karrotto to live, anyway. An infant like that, with such a low combat level, sent out all alone? It was more or less a cull. Saiyajin. Most people these days don't remember what the Saiyajin were really like. They'd like to rewrite history, to turn the Saiyajin into the victims of the piece, but they were just as bad. Worse, in some ways. That little baby must be long dead."

"Karrotto? No, he's Son Goku. They're the same guy."

"Don't bullshit me," she said. "I just told you I've read the file. Karrotto had a combat level of less than five. Son Goku is obviously Paragus's boy."

"Who the hell's Paragus?" I brought my hand up to my face, feigning frustration - it wasn't hard to do, because who the hell _was_ Paragus anyway? - and covered my eyes. Though the slit between my fingers I saw her hand make a quick movement. I was a hundred times faster, kicking out to knock her hand aside as her fingers slipped under the edge of her boot. The thing she'd meant to hide in there bounced against the back of her booth and rolled under the table.

Uragiru lunged for it, but she was slow and I was a whole hell of a lot faster. I'd snatched it up from under the table before she'd even realized that it wasn't there anymore. I leaned my elbows on the table and held it up to examine it.

The thing was no bigger than an almond, oblong and egg-shaped and made of semitransparent crystal, or else something like crystal. A fiery yellow, it was shot through with air bubbles and small feather-esque shapes in flame blue and green, hot red and bright orange. I tossed it in the air, and her eyes tracked it as it rose and fell.

So I called that one alright. Yes I did.

"What you did back there?" I told her. "That was way too fucking obvious."

"That's mine. Give it back." She held her hand out, as though she had every expectation that I'd just go ahead and do as I was told. "Give it back now."

The Bear had been watching us, and now he lumbered over to the table. He was one hell of a bruiser, at least as big as Aiken, burly and shaggy in his cook's apron. The guy had quite a scowl on him, full of big teeth and a tongue the size of the sole of a big man's boot, and he turned it on me, glaring down with small reddish eyes. "He bother you, ma'am?" the Bear said, talking to Uragiru but still keeping his eyes on me. I looked back up at him. People don't like it when I look at them for too long. Gives them the heebie-jeebies.

It only took Uragiru a few moments' consideration to dismiss the Bear as all muscle and no real power, and to decide from there to get rid of him. By then the Bear was starting to sweat, starting to wish he hadn't decided to fuck with me. When Uragiru spoke he seized the excuse to turn his head to look at her and away from me with both paws. "There's no problem," she said, "And he'll be leaving in a minute."

"Says you," I said. "I'm not going anywhere unless I feel like it."

The Bear looked pissed, but when Uragiru waved a hand to shoo him away he took the hint, and finally decided to take his furry butt back over to where it belonged.

"So this is how I figure it," I said, tossing the ball from hand to hand. The thing was heavier than it looked like it should have been. It glowed with its own gentle interior warmth, but became suddenly hot when I closed my fist over it. "It's a Namekjin thingy, obviously." I paused to see if she would argue, but she only crossed her arms and glared. Reminded me a little bit of Juuhachigou, that glare did, bored with what I had to say before I'd even said it and royally pissed because she wasn't getting her way.

When Uragiru didn't say anything I went on. "You guys didn't know about the Namekjin being wished back, so I figure you got it from a Namekjin who didn't know either, probably because he was off-world when the planet went boom. Aiken's dumb enough to make Son Goku look almost normal, but I figure she was right when she said she'd seen you talking with a Namekjin a while back, yeah?" I made a question of it to see if I could get anything else out of her, but I didn't have any doubts that the dog had been right. Stupid as she was, Aiken's called it right, but Uragiru had played her and the Icejin and everyone else who wasn't me so well that no one had taken Aiken seriously, let alone stopped to ask further questions. She was looking for a way to play me now, but she was out of luck, because I'm just not that stupid.

"Why don't you grow up?" she said, but she was just fishing. Looking for some way to distract me or make me pissed enough that I forgot what I was after or made a stupid mistake, and she did seem to have a talent for saying just what she needed to say to get what she wanted out of somebody, but I was the one in charge here. Me and no body else.

"You want to try and make me?" I said, and paused, daring her to. I tossed the little crystal egg in the air again, and she made a sudden lunge over the top of the table to grab it out of the air. I caught her hand with my free one as the egg dropped back into my palm. Pulled her a little closer, held the egg up close to her face for her to see. "Tell me something interesting about this," I said, and when she didn't I tighten my grip on her hand.

Bones ground together and crackled. She didn't scream - stubborn woman - but her cry, caught between clenched jaws, was loud enough to bring the Bear to our table. The bastard had been watching us, waiting, as though he'd expected this very thing, and when he came back he brought a shotgun with him. He leveled the barrel against the side of my head. Like I really gave a shit.

The Bear had brought company, too, because the miners and Indian had followed him almost as quickly, and they had guns too, everyone of them pointed at me. "Let the lady go," one of the miners said, and waggled the tip of his revolver at me. I had my own gun, a fun little toy holstered against the side of my thigh, but no free hands to draw with. Instead, I closed my fist around the egg and thought ugly thoughts as the thing grew hot.

The humans went down a lot faster than Son had, collapsing in a tangled pile, and the Bear staggered, clawing at his throat, and fell on top of them. A gun went off, but the bullet bounced harmlessly off Uragiru's cheek, provoking the slightest little bluish-red welt.

"Dangerous little thing, isn't it?" I said.

"What's your fucking problem?" she asked, as though it were rhetorical, as though I didn't have her big bad secret in the palm of my hand, to do whatever I wanted with. Half an hour ago she'd been shaking with shock and rage, and that had been real. This? This was another front, a cover to help her figure out some way to get the better of me. She wasn't nearly as disinterested as she pretended to be. She said, "You're killing them, you know."

"So? I don't figure Son'll find out. He's not very attentive, but I guess you've figured that out." The egg was getting hotter, and not only the egg - the entire room felt a sudden ten degrees hotter than it had been. Behind the bar the bottles of liquor began to explode at a time and then in concert, and where the alcohol splattered blue flame blossomed across the counter.

Now she looked scared. Scared for real. "Put it down," she told me.

"Make me," I said, but I was starting to think that maybe I should drip the thing. Not because she'd told me to or anything, but because it really was getting _hot_. The windows were fogging up, but in the clear spaces I could see the snow dropping from the roof in melting wet clumps.

"Put it down," she repeated. "You're malicious and you're undirected and you're dangerous, and you don't know what you're doing."

"Right. You're just so much better than me." A roar came from the kitchen, and looking through the doorway I saw the deep fryer go up in a ball of flame.

"Right. You're just so much better than me." A roar came from the kitchen, and looking through the doorway I saw the deep fryer go up in a ball of flame.

"You don't understand the situation. They were going to start it all up again," she said.

"Don't care," I said. My hand was starting to hurt, which was really weird, because it had been decades since I could have said that I'd actually felt pain. It had been interesting at first, but I was starting to not like it.

"If you hatch that thing you'll wish you hadn't. Not every creature the Namekjin can enthrall are as indifferent and bloodless as the dragons. You'll die in flames."

"_Shit!_" I hissed, and let the thing drop onto the table - not because I cared about her warnings or scolds but because the thing had suddenly ratcheted up its temperature. The egg sunk into the surface of the table with a hiss and a plum of smoke, burning its way rapidly though two inches of hard wood. Uragiru reached out to grab it anyway, but I brushed her hand away and caught the egg as it slipped through the newly burned hole. It was still hotter than hell, and I walked it gingerly along my finger tips, never letting it rest long enough to burn me. And it could do that, believe it or not; a blister was already forming in the center of my palm.

On the floor the humans and Bear were hacking and gasping and thinking about getting back on their feet, and it might be that they'd be foolish enough to make even bigger annoyances of themselves once they did. And the fire in the kitchen, the one that had started when the fryer exploded, was still roaring, greasy smoke billowing out through the doorway.

"Let's cut to the chase," I said. "Whatever's going on with you and the Icejin? It doesn't have anything to do with me. I couldn't care less, point of fact. You're a big girl, right? Why should you live with her foot on your neck? If you want to get her out of your way I'm not the sort of person who'll get in your way. I dig that, actually. More power to you.

"That's not the point," she said, but it so was. It was so totally the point.

"Whatever. Not my business. Don't care.

"But," I said, and I pulled her closer, pulled her up so our faces were almost touching. "Son Goku is my business.

That brought the honest rage out, burning hotter and blacker because she was too trapped and too impotent to do anything about it, and she knew it. And, I'd never tell, but I dug that too. Juuhachigou and me together, that was something we could dig alright. "He's a monstrous idiot."

"Oh, he's dumb as shit," I agreed. "But that's besides the point. Son Goku's mine. He's mine - mine to kill or not kill, my choice to make. I need him around for right now. I start to get a little rough around the edges when he's dead, see, a little crazy. And I don't think you'd like dealing with me when I'm feeling that way.

"You take care of your business and I'll take care of mine." I pressed the egg back into her palm. My skin stung but hers sizzled.

I put her and the burning Inn behind me quickly.

It wasn't like we were playing for keeps, after all, not with the Dragon on hand. Uragiru thought she was cleverer than everyone else, but a few of Son's friends weren't entirely stupid. They'd figure her out eventually. Until then, I'd just wait and see what fun developed. Things were just starting to get interesting.


	13. Chapter Thirteen: Frigid

_A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat's eyes don't even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog's eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, "What do you want me to do for you? I'll do anything for you." Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don't have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing. _- Roy Blount, Jr.

Frigid

I woke at the coaxing of Aiken's voice, eager and anxious and low, rumbling in my ear. I opened my eyes to see her crouched beside the futon, hovering half a meter away from me. "I'm going now," she said.

"What time is it?" I asked, sitting up.

"I… I don't know," she said, brows furrowing. "I lost my scouter. It exploded, remember?" But she added, "The sun's up." And then, again, "I'm going now. Or, I mean, he said that we ought to go now. The Super Saiyajin did. That's proper, isn't it?"

"Aiken, I am not entirely awake," I said, slowly, trying to make some sense her words. "Where are you going, now?"

"To go and find the other balls. The Dragon Balls, those are. With Son Goku."

"That's good, Aiken," I said.

"I'm going to come right back here after we've got them," she promised. "I'm not going to go running off like some people did."

Uragiru. "She's still gone, then?"

"Yeah," Aiken, said, but then backpedaled. "Well, she almost came back. They knew she was coming before she ever got here, and that scar-face went out to meet her. Then he came back again and begged one of those bean-pills off Son Goku, and left again. And then they didn't come back anymore, but you were sleeping. Is that Yamcha a Saiyajin?"

"I don't know, Aiken."

"They can see people with their brains, I guess."

"Aiken, you're being very silly."

"Sorry," she said, instantly contrite. "Sorry. But I was going to go…?"

"That's good, Aiken," I repeated. "You should go do that."

She started to go, but I stopped her. "Aiken?"

Aiken hand dropped from the doorknob, and she turned back to watch me expectantly.

"I suppose a shower might be too much to hope for?" I asked.

"There's… it's like a barrel outside. I think they're using it like it was a bath. There's room for a fire under it.

"Of course," I said, and sighed. "Primitives.

"But you ought to go now, Aiken. It's better that you shouldn't keep him waiting."

"Right!" she said, and opened the door to leave. But then she stopped in the threshold, turned back to look at me again. "I'm going to fix this," she said. "It is going to be okay."

"Aiken…" I said, but she was already gone, bounding down the steps three at a time.

I waited until I was sure that they had gone - too early in the morning to face him - and then I went downstairs.


	14. Chapter Fourteen: Aiken

_Think him as a serpent's egg, _

_Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous, _

_And kill him in the shell._

- William Shakespeare

Aiken 

My Mistress and I, walking the halls of her ship, going from one place to another - I don't remember why - when ahead of us, around the bend in the curving hall, came the sounds of voices.

Loud, those voices were. Uragiru was loud, anyway. Frost wasn't, but there was a sort of rumble to his voice that tended to carry. My Mistress hadn't yet heard, and we'd went on another ten steps before I found the voice to speak up.

She brought up a hand for silence before I'd spoken a first word, and hissed, "Quiet, Aiken." She perked her head up to listen, and then began to move forward again, slowly now, sneaking. I skulked after, careful not to make any noise that might give the game away.

"I only thought to suggest the possibly of opening the matter to consideration," Frost was saying. Wrong, that he should try to smooth her down like that. That was the reason she got away with as much as she did; he let her.

"I only thought to suggest the possibly of opening the matter to consideration," Frost was saying. Wrong, that he should try to smooth her down like that. That was the reason she got away with as much as she did; he let her.

"You're going to put everything we've worked for at risk," she spat back quickly, so loud and venomous that my Mistress came to a stunned and sudden stop, and didn't try to come any closer to those two. "You are talking about risking _everything_."

"Uragiru," he said, and there was a tone of warning in his voice now, but still he tried to reason with her. Frost could be really stupid sometimes. "I believe that any risks can be mitigated. I can keep the situation under control."

"Bullshit," she said, and then rushed on, "You're acting no different from the others, do you know that? No better. Selfish and short-sighted and not careless of anything except getting what you want for yourself."

"I've earned the right to want this," he said. "I've taken every risk for them. There are billions alive now because I stuck my neck out for them. When's it my turn?"

"_You will never make up for it_," she told him. "It is never going to be okay. It's never going to be enough." Then, on the heel of that; breezily, mocking; "The entire point's moot, anyway. She'll never consent to letting you hatch some new little monster. That much can be said for her, at least."

Every year there was an egg. I knew that, even if I'd never seen one. Every year there was an egg, and every year it was left alone to go cold, whether there was a little speck of life in it or not. My Mistress came from very good stock, and there was no knowing ahead of time to what extent that might have bred true in any child of hers. She had no intentions of unleashing something she might not be able to control.

There are whole planets that'll tell you my Mistress never did a single good thing for their benefit. But every year there was that unhatched egg.

"Do not forget who you are," Frost warned her, and the icy rage in his voice was somehow worse for the way he managed even then to keep it so carefully in check. "Even I have my limits, Uragiru."

My Mistress and I waited, listening to hear what would be said next, but the silence drew on. Then there was the sudden click of her boots on the floor as she whirled away from Frost and started down the hallway, coming quickly toward us.

"Aiken!" my Mistress whispered urgently. I stepped around the corner quickly, stopping Uragiru with a show of bluster while my Mistress slipped away.

She froze Frost out for almost a year after that, put me at her door to keep him from their quarters at night, barely spoke to him during the day. Lost time, when it turned out there wasn't a whole lot left. By the time she was ready to have him back the sickness already had its teeth in him.


	15. Chapter Fifteen: Frigid

"_We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance." - _Marcel Proust

Frigid

Aiken had gone and the house was by all appearances empty, but there were voices outside. Lacking any better direction, I followed.

Out of doors it was surprisingly bright, and I wonder how long I had slept. The children were - as ever - ubiquitous, spread out across the open space around the house, but the adults were not immediately visible. I heard the voice of an unfamiliar woman, loud and self-important enough to rise above the shouts and squeals of the children, and followed it around the corner of the house.

Seated in big wicker chairs beside a table that was shaded by an umbrella, the two women did not at first notice that I was there. Chichi I knew from the night before, of course, but the other woman was new. Were I any judge on the matter, she was at least as old as Chichi, yet she seemed far more vivacious and vibrant. She was complaining to Chichi about something - loudly.

"Vegeta is so much like a spoiled kid. It is impossible to take him seriously when he shows off like this." She sighed dramatically, and declared, "I am too old for this shit." She turned sideways in her chair, leaning back and crossing her legs with the unaffected flirtatious air of a young girl, putting the lie to her words. A moment later she noticed me, and slide back up in her chair, blinking.

"But they're never going to grow up," Chichi said. "There's no point in even hoping for it. Look at Goku! Off running after adventure like it's the old days, and never mind -"

Finding her voice, the new woman cut Chichi off to call out at me imperiously, "Hey! Come on over here!" When I did not react immediately - in truth, I was at a lose as to how to do so - she coaxed loudly, "We aren't going to bite, you know."

I was not inclined toward responding to such audacity - not in any manner that would have been considered socially acceptable, at any rate - but I had no wish to foster the delusion that I was frightened of her. I simply chose to do nothing, and stayed where I was. For her part, the woman was completely without shame. She did nothing but stare.

Finally, she adjusted her tone and began again. "Good morning," she said. "I'm Bulma."

"Very pleased to meet you," I lied quickly. I felt that I could then move closer to the table without losing face, and did so, though I did not sit.

A mistake, to give any ground with this one. "So you're the one who's got Vegeta so pissed off, huh?" she asked me, conversationally.

"I wouldn't know," I said, as evenly as I could.

"Oh boy have you ever," she informed me, airily. "He hasn't stomped around the compound like this in I don't know how long. Hell. Decades. The staff is half convinced that they're all going be murdered, but I just told them to stay out of his way until he's finished pouting."

"Is that adequate?" I asked. "I mean, so far as preventative measures go?"

"It damn well better be. I will cut his bob-tailed _off_, he tries to pull any shit like that with me. And he knows it. I'd kick his ass to the curb, and he'd learn awful quick that 'Prince of all the Saiyajin' is not the sort of previous work experience that gets you somewhere during a job interview."

"I was under the impression," I began, when she finally seemed finished, "that he had died on Nameksei?"

She waved a hand dismissively as she bent to pick her purse up from the grass next to her chair. "These days, who hasn't been dead at least once?" Digging through the contents of her bag, she pulled out a rectangular container. "Smoke?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow at Chichi as she drew a cigarette from the box.

"No, thank you," Chichi said.

"Uh-uh. Don't even think about it," Bulma told me, with an imperious mixture of scold and sympathy. "Not in your condition." I'd no interest in her cigarettes or her pity or her advice, but plainly there was no force in the universe that might have stopped her from going on. "These things'll kill you, you know," she said, shielding the lighter's flame from the breeze expertly with a cupped palm as she lit up. And on the heel of that, as though it were part of the same thought, she told me, "You don't have anything to worry about."

I couldn't help laughing.

"No, really," she said. "Son always comes through. Every time.

"That reminds me," she told Chichi, and began to rummage through the contents of the bag again, the lit cigarette dangling between her teeth. "I figured you guys were sort of crowded here, right? So you can borrow the spare vacation house until Son gets everything sorted out." She pulled out a second box, slightly larger than the one the one the cigarette had come from, and flipped the cover open. From the recesses within the case she took a metallic pill, no larger than the first joint of her finger, and placed it on the table in front of Chichi. There were numbers printed on the side the capsule.

"You're too generous," Chichi said, and dropped the 'spare house' carefully into her apron pocket. Truly, it would be far easier to trust in the abilities of these people if they did not act as though they were deeply insane with such frequency. I could only maintain so many pretenses at once.

"I think I should like to go on a walk," I said, discovering it to be true only as I spoke it.

As I started away I heard Bulma say to Chichi, "You know, even after all that trouble on Nameksei and here I never did get to see Furiza. I'd have thought they'd be more buggy, you know? Like Cell." There had been no attempt to keep her voice low. I walked faster, did not dignify her with a backwards glance.

In the yard, half-a-dozen midsized children pursued a black and white checkered ball to no apparent purpose, kicking it away as soon as it came within reach, and I went wide to avoid them. A few stopped to watch me go, and the unattended ball bounced over the edge of the cliff. One of the whelps dropped over the edge after it, flying up again with the ball in a hand a few seconds later, to boos and howls of "Foul!" and "Cheater!" and "No hands, Boxer!"

The cocky grin fell off and he dropped the ball, then began to counter the accusations with shouts and jeers of his own. A second boy, larger and darker than the first, stepped over to Boxer, and smoothed him down with words that were spoken too lowly for me to make out. They turned together to look at me, and I realized that this was the same pair that had seemed to be up to something the night before. The second boy was as black-haired as any Saiyajin, but his skin was a richer shade of brown than had been common among the Saiyajin, who had tended to run more toward varying shades of tan and gray. Boxer was violet-handed, and stood only chest-high to the other; I was not certain, but there seemed something sly about him that reminded me immediately of Vegeta.

They started toward me, but then hesitated, stopped briefly to confer. They veered in another direction, toward a tree under which a much smaller, yellow-haired girl was seated, engaged in what appeared to be a most intense discussion with her doll. An elderly-looking dinosaur or lizard of some sort, purple-scaled and pale-bellied, slept curled up beside her, its heavy tail across her lap. She looked up at them, blinking as they towered over her, and suddenly I was certain that there was some danger here. I looked for Bulma and Chichi, but they were around the curve of the house, well out of sight. The smaller boy said something to her, of which only the tone - imperious command - reached me.

"Leave me alone," she said, high voice projecting loudly. "I don't have to." The girl looked back down at her doll, and Boxer, with a darting movement that was too quick to follow, snatched it away.

The girl was wobbly compared to them, so much slower and more awkward as she climbed to her feet, and from this I gathered that she was fully human. "I'll tell, Boxer! Give her back!" she shouted. She stamped her foot and crossed her arms, and repeated, "I'm going to tell!" "Cut it out," the second boy told the first, and grabbed the doll away from Boxer. He handed it back to the girl with great seriousness. "Come on, Amaguri. Please?"

"You're ridiculous," she said.

"Just do it, okay?" the boy said, and repeated, "Come on."

"Fine!" she said, throwing up her arms dramatically in a gesture that sent the doll's arms lashing. Then she turned and started toward me. Had I expected that, I would not have stopped to watch. Now it was too late to avoid them; and so, I stood my ground as she approached me. The other two flanked her at a distance, hanging back as though bashful.

"Hi," the girl said, after coming to a stop in front of me. I said nothing. She turned back to look at the others, the doll dangling forgotten in her hand, and the second boy waved her on. She turned back, said to me, "They wanna know…" and then trailed off, looking down at her doll. Frowning seriously, she picked a piece of dead grass from its hair, and then started up again, resolved now. "They want to know if they can play with that other one who was with you. To spar."

"Aiken."

"Yeah okay. They think she looks strong, so they wanna know if she'll spar with them. But they aren't supposed to be botherin' you." She turned back to glare accusingly at the pair, and they dropped their eyes. "Grandpa told them that."

"Something might be arranged," I allowed.

"It's because they're Saiyajin," she informed me. "All they ever wanna do is hit stuff." And she added, looking down to pick absently at the doll again. "There's a doggy in my class, too, you know. Her name is Lucy. She likes to color."

"You're Juuhachigou's child, aren't you?"

She snickered at me. "Nah-oh! That's my Grandma!"

"And those others?"

"Tanga's parents are Uncle Uub and Aunt Bura. Boxer's my brother, but he's got a different Dad than me. Mom and Trunks used to be married, but now they aren't anymore."

"That's all very complicated."

"There's lots and lots of us here."

"I noticed."

She slung her doll over her shoulder. "I am going to go and color now," she informed me. "You wanna come?"

"I've no interest," I said. "I intend to go over there for a time." I motioned vaguely at the woods behind me, for I had no fixed destination.

"Okay," she said, then warned, "But you gotta be careful about the dinosaurs and the saber-tooth cats. They got teeth. They eat people right up."

"I imagine I'll manage," I said.

"Okay," she said, "I'm going to go now," and turning, she did just that, while I went on my own way.

Astonishing child, I thought, and shocked myself by hoping that she never came to learn that the wider universe was not as forgiving of weakness as her family here.

There was nothing especially remarkable about these woods - rocks and trees and water, as could be found on nearly any underdeveloped planet - but neither was the scenery unpleasant. Ambling in particular direction, I'd soon put a deal of distance between myself and the home of Son Goku, to such a point that I could longer hear the shouts of the children. I'd no fear of becoming lost, as the house was set on a high and almost treeless cliff, easily spotted from the air, and so I wondered on, thinking.

It was insupportable that I should - in light of everything - feel so good. It was disloyal to Frost… selfish. Yet that I did feel very well was undeniable. It was the abdication of any sort of authority that did it, perhaps. Whatever happened here next, this business of the dragon or aught else, would be entirely beyond my direction. In the past I'd found such lose of agency maddening, but this - here and now - was a different sort of thing. Was the Saiyajin having some effect on me? I did not know. His influence seemed at work on all here, subconscious but undeniable, drawing out better natures.

I was not myself. If I stayed here - if it was permitted or required that I should stay here - would I become someone else? How strange it was, I thought again, that Vegeta should be here, among people such as these. There was something more at work here than I understood, that much was clear. Could I learn it?

Lost in thought as I was, the sense that I was being watched came on gradually. Yet once the feeling overtook me, it could not be shaken. I turned a circle, trying to see beyond the thick brush and shadows. "Who's there?" I demanded. "Show yourself."

No one came forward. No one spoke. Not a twig stirred. Still, I was absolutely certain that someone was there. The predators the girl had warned me against, perhaps, some dumb beast that had mistaken me for an easy target and begun its stalk. Or the children themselves, following me, spying. That seemed more likely. I might have burned the cover away in half an instant, but if the girl was hidden somewhere among the brush such an action would certainly have killed her.

Instead, I began to lift myself upwards, looking for a better vantage point above the tree line. I'd barely risen from the ground when something in my chest caught, a searing pain that brought me back down to earth, down to my knees.

As bad as the pain was, I did not at first realize… I feared embarrassment. I was dreaded that whoever was watching me from the trees would come forward now, witnesses to compound my shame with pity. I feared also that it was the children, and that I would frighten them or that they would try to touch me. But when the attack first took me I had no expectation -

I did not die easily, or quickly, or well.

But I did die.


	16. Chapter Sixteen: Aiken

"_There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." - George Carlin_

**Aiken **

There's a kind of dread that grows in your belly, when you know something that you don't _know_, before you know if for sure.

When we got back from hunting Dragon Balls Chichi was outside, watching the sky for us. It was almost dark by then. We had found all the balls but one, and I wanted to keep looking until we'd found all seven, but the Saiyajin said he'd be in trouble if he didn't go home for night, and I was meant to listen to him. My Mistress said that I ought to.

Chichi was worried, but trying not to be. And she was mad, but she was working not to show it. A little blond-haired girl was half-sleeping in her arms, her face pressed hard against Chichi's shoulder, and that was why she was trying so hard to act like nothing was wrong.

But something was wrong.

My Mistress was missing, Chichi said. She'd gone off somewhere by herself late that morning, and Chichi didn't know if she'd gotten lost or if she had deliberately decided to stay away. "I thought maybe she was with you two," Chichi said. "All the kids are here. I can't keep track of them all and everything else on my own, Goku, and I don't have any help. I'm just worried something's going to happen."

The girl in her arms stirred. "A dinosaur got her," she said into Chichi's shoulder, and sniffled weakly.

"No, Amaguri, honey, no," Chichi said, patting her back while she hiccupped. Her voice didn't change when she spoke to Goku, but her eyes were furious. "Go get her. Now."

"Sure," the Saiyajin said. "Sure I will, Chichi. Don't get mad." He raised two fingers to his forehead and closed his eyes, frowning with concentration. I didn't know what he was doing, but when his frown started to grow I suddenly began to get very, very scared.

"This is the most inconsiderate thing I've ever -" Chichi said, too angry to finish the thought. She wheeled on me. The blood was pounding in my head, turning me stupid, and I cringed away. "Is that how you people replay hospitality? Scaring everyone silly -"

"Be quiet," Goku said, without opening his eyes. He seemed to know without looking that Chichi was about to explode, because he added quickly, "I can't focus when people are talking at me, okay?" He scrunched his eyes tighter, and mumbled to himself, "I don't get why…"

Then he said, "Oh.

"Oh," he said again, and his hand slid back down to his side as his eyes came open. "Oh boy.

"Well, shit," the Saiyajin said. "I guess she up and died."

He just out and said it like that. I heard him say it, but his words stopped at my ears. My brain refused to do anything with them. My head roared, so loud that I didn't hear what he said next, though I could see his mouth moving. Then the sound kicked back in, and I heard him say pragmatically, "Oughta go see if we can find the body before something gets at it."

He didn't know, I realized. He'd been with me all day; he couldn't know anything I didn't. "You're crazy," I said. "You're a liar.

"I'm going to go find her."

The Saiyajin didn't try to argue with me, and I decided that was as good as an admission that he'd just been making stuff up. He couldn't know, I told myself again, but I was still so scared.

"Where'd you say they saw her last?" the Saiyajin asked his wife.

She told us. My Mistress had gone mostly on foot, so there was a trail there to find, old and faded as it was. The Saiyajin had a better nose than me, and this was his place - his land. He was used to hunting here, and when I lost the trail he found it again. Toe-prints in the dirt. Leaves tattered by the casual strike of a tail. It was almost full dark by then, but the Saiyajin made his own light for us to see by.

I think he must have smelled it first. Before I did. Dead has its own smell. It can't be mistaken for anything else.

The Saiyajin stopped, but I didn't. I kept going, so I saw -

I won't say it. I won't say what I saw.

He came up behind me. I knew that there was a weight to the hand that he'd put on my shoulder, but I did not feel it personally. It was strange, how little I felt like I was part of myself. I'm not here anymore. I'm already gone.

"But it's okay," I said, remembering suddenly. "We'll just get the last Dragon Ball, and wish her back. I'll go and get it now -"

The Saiyajin said, "The Dragon Balls don't work if they just die, Aiken. You can't wish back people who just die."

And, at a loss for anything else to say, he added, "Sorry."

He moved away from me, hunched over my Mistress. The body of my Mistress, who was dead now and not coming back to me. There was dirt on it, mud and dead leaves, and my Mistress could never abide being anything less than perfectly tidy. There's blood in the mouth.

The Saiyajin picked it up awkwardly, and suddenly I could not stand for the sight of his hands on her. She never wanted him touching her, and now - now that she can't do a thing to stop him - the dumb Saiyajin bastard thinks he can just -

The tail dangled in the dirt, trailing between his legs for him to trip over, maybe step on. My Mistress would have never allowed it to touch the ground.

He shouldn't have been touching her.

I wanted him to leave us alone. I wanted him to go away.

I… there's a blank spot here. It's hard to think. I must have went after him, but I don't know. It's all black.

I - there's a blank spot here. I don't know what I did. I think I went after him, but I don't know. It's all black.

When I woke up again it was pure dark outside, and I was alone in the guest room of Son Goku's home. There's a pain in the back of my head, dull and unurgent, where he must have struck me. He should have hit harder. I don't want to be here.

I won't stay when my Mistress has gone.


	17. Chapter Seventeen: Frigid

_How did I come into this world? Why was I not consulted? And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him. - _Soren Kierkegaard

_To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know. _- Alexis Carrel

**Frigid **

I could not say just what I had expected to find in the Netherworld. There was hardly a race in the universe that didn't harbor a thousand disparate and conflicting narratives on the subject of gods and the afterlife. It was impossible to take the topic seriously - to credit any of it - when I had so often witnessed the consistent failure of these many gods to intervene on behalf of their supplicants. Never had a god done anything to halt me, even when called to action by the pleas of thousands. Never either had any higher power come to my own aid, though I admit that I've never deigned to request such help as that.

Therefore, I could only conclude that the gods - if they existed at all - were either indifferent or completely ineffectual. Now that I was here, it seemed to me that both suppositions were correct; More than anything else, the Netherworld operates as though in were some horridly indifferent bureaucracy. In retrospect, this was hardly surprising.

But I was not myself here. For a time, after I died, it seems that I knew nothing. When I became aware of my surroundings again I found myself to be ethereal, without substance. No different in appearance from the thousands of smoky little souls queued ahead of me, a vaporous puff among countless other puffs. Pure consciousness without form, stuck in a very, very long line.

Officious-looking creatures, some red-skinned and others blue, stood on yellow clouds, from which they directed traffic along the curling tangles of silver paths. I could perceive no distinction between those souls that were sent in one direction and those who moved in another; they were by all appearances identical. The officials struck me as mortals, though in my present state there was no possibility of testing that presumption. The centers of their heads were topped by oversized, blunt horns. Many wore glasses.

I attempted to communicate to these officials the importance of my person, but found myself voiceless. When I tried to move out of the queue a strong current of air forced me firmly back into place. The experience was infuriating.

I could not say how long I was kept waiting. It may have been days. What meaning had time, in such a place?

When I was at last permitted to pass through the doors of the audience chamber, I suddenly found myself in procession of my own form, or at least some facsimile of such. Startled, I looked down at my hands, flexing the fingers. But there was no time for befuddlement, and as quickly as I could tear my eyes away I did so, stepping further into the room as I studied my surroundings.

The ceilings here were no less than ten meters high, the better to accommodate the massive giant who was seated behind an equally colossal mahogany desk; a place of judgment, if ever I'd seen one. From the first glance I did not like him; he had a hairy, brutish face, and was a dozen times too large for my liking. Two of the blue-skinned officials flanked his desk on either side.

While I looked up at him he did not look down at me. Instead, his eyes skimmed over the file that was open on his desk in front of him. It was a very large file. "Mitigating circumstances?" the giant said, with a gruff voice that rumbled through the room.

He was not speaking to me. The official on his right side said, "Victim of murder."

"Did the perpetrator have justification?" the giant asked.

"That's debatable, Lord Yemma," the one on his left said.

"Debatable?" the giant roared, incredulously.

"Yes, there was justification," the one on the right said quickly.

"'_Debatable_,'" the giant mocked, grumbling as he flipped through the pages. "Frigging temp employees."

These fools are incompetent. "Excuse me," I said. "You're mistaken."

He did not so much as glance down at me. "Hell," the giant said, with a last cursory glimpse at the file. "Third plane."

I should be a very insincere person were I to profess shock.

"I don't accept your authority," I told him.

The giant did look at me then. I had trouble meeting his eyes. How much of myself was in that file that he flicked though so carelessly? All that I would have kept secret, that I would forget myself if I knew how? He saw though me. He saw nothing of worth.

"Second plane," he said. "Or would you rather be placed with the incorrigibles? It's well within my jurisdiction to put someone with a record like yours there. I'll warn you; there's no chance of parole for that sort."

Well, and I knew it was in my best interests to keep silent. And yet. "How is it that you presume to judge me - or anyone else for that matter - when so much of what a person is and becomes is shaped by society, by the circumstances of birth? Things never had to be like this. Why wasn't I born somewhere safe? Why wasn't I given Son Goku as a brother? Everything could have been different."

The giant was bored; he looked down at me indifferently, his face cupped in one hand. His other hand tapped a pencil that was longer and thicker than my tail against the surface of his desk. I realized suddenly that I could not be saying anything that he hadn't heard millions upon millions of times before. I didn't care. I intended to have my say.

"You have set us up to fail," I said, and was shocked to find myself standing up for my family, and for the Saiyajin race, and for everyone who was born with too much power for their own good. "You grant men the power of gods, but they're still men! How can they be expected to learn self-control, when there's none who can guide or check them? Anyone would go bad." And I said again, "You've sent us up to fail. There was no chance. There was no chance from the start."

"Ma'am, you're confused," the giant told me. "You're asking the wrong person. Free will and self-determination? That stuff's way above my pay-grade."

"Then I want to speak to your supervisor. I am not going anywhere until I get some answers. I will not be the villain in a story I never consented to take part in."

The floor opened up under my feet.

It seemed that I fell a very long way.


	18. Chapter Eighteen: Juunanagou

[Author's Note: This chapter probably should have been posted as Chapter Sixteen instead, but I guess I got a bit ahead of myself. It will change position in the final rewrite. Oh, also - I posted some character art of some of the OCs from this story on my profile, so you can check that out if you're interested.]

_No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other. - Jascha Heifetz_

**Juunanagou**

I've never had the privilege of training under immortals and gods, so I'll admit that when it came to tracing ki I wasn't so hot. I had to come close to Son's house before I had any chance of tracing the movements of the new comers. I'd been after Aiken, had meant to drop a hint or two into her raggedy ear to see what sort of hell that might raise, but she wasn't around. Son was gone, too. But Uragiru and the Icejin were in the area, surprisingly close to one another, and because that looked like it had good potential for drama I headed toward them.

Like I said, everything I knew about sensing ki was self-taught. I knew where Frigid was (and also where Uragiru stood, relative to her) but if she was feeling anything remarkable - and she must have been, really, since she was in the middle of dying - I didn't pick up on it. I had a steady bead on her, but then, when I wasn't half a kilometer away, her ki just sort of blinked out. She was there and then she wasn't, and for a second I thought she'd just bolted out of my tracking range for some reason. Then I sussed it out.

I kept my feet off the ground, didn't touch anything. Son had a nose like a dog, and Aiken practically was one, and I didn't want to leave behind any tracks for them to wonder about.

Bodies were weird things, when they're dead. Stupid and interesting. In an instant every hope and fear and hate can just slip out - poof! - and leave nothing behind but a rotting slab of meat. The life never comes back into it - not usually, anyway - no matter how much the sad slobs left behind might want it to. Once it's gone it just stays gone, and - if you don't have the dragon balls as a cheat - there's fuck all that can be done to change it.

Nothing else was ever so irrevocable. If anything else breaks - a tool, a toy, a machine - all you need are the parts and skills to put it back together. Living things don't work that way - they're poorly designed, if you ask me. The hallmark of our universe seemed to be shoddy workmanship.

So the whole thing's weird. They say that my other self made millions of living people head. Did he have a better understanding of how this shit works? Could he pinpoint the exact instant when someone becomes nothing?

I was dead once before, though not long enough to see anything interesting. Most of the planet kicked it around the same time, and the crowd in the Netherlands's reception area had been huge.

I'll never die again, I thought as I floated over the body, and if I did I'd never look like that empty thing. I would never be old, or wasted, or worn down. The day might come when one of the Saiyajin or some new big bad decided to blow my guts out through the back of my spine, but I would never just die, not the way other people do, not the way Uragiru would be counting on people to figure that Frigid just died.

She was still nearby, Uragiru was, but moving away, and I didn't think that she'd seen me. I circled around ahead of her. When I dropped down into her flight path she reared back, looked surprised enough to scream but bit it back in the last instant. And then her face shut down.

"So," I said. "Feeling guilty?"

"Every day." She straightened. "Not about this."

"Don't. Don't ever feel guilty for anything. I never do."

"You're a psychopath."

"Not yet," I said, and shrugged. "I might still go that way."


	19. Chapter Nineteen: Aiken

"_Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six." - _Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

**Aiken **

The Saiyajin's people mean good - they don't mean anything but good - but they think I owe them something. They think I ought to try to figure out some way to feel better, so that they'll feel better, too. I won't, though. I'm a better Inujin than that. I'm not going to stay anywhere when my Mistress has already gone.

For a long time, Son Goku tried to keep me back up at the house, but I just kept coming back down here. He's given up on that now, I think. Seen it won't do anyone any good. This is where I'm meant to be, down here where my Mistress died. This was where I should have been.

They still kept coming down here, though, the Saiyajin's people. They don't know enough to know that they ought to leave me alone now, or maybe they just don't know how to do it. They leave food and drink down here, and sometimes, after they've gone away, little animals come out to sniff at and eat it. They take quick nibbles at what's those plates, watching me slyly like they think I might try to drive them off or hurt them. But they don't need to worry - I don't want any.

The Saiyajin's woman tried to scold me into doing what she wanted. "You are scaring the children," Chichi told me, hiding her own worry behind bluster. "And you're being very ungrateful. Get up to the house, and get yourself something to eat. Now," she said, and pointed, but I didn't go.

The others were less forceful, but they wanted the same thing from me. I'd drift away from a while, and when I came back Son and his boys would be there, squatting in a half circle around me and talking in low, worried voices. Goten knew enough to just keep quite, but the smart one plied at me with empty reassurances, nice sounding words that didn't change the facts of anything. Son tried to promise me that there was an afterlife, and that my Mistress wasn't really gone, just off getting reborn, but she never believed in any of that silly stuff, so I don't either.

Once, I'd been away inside myself, and I came back to find Uragiru bent over beside me. She reached out to pinch the skin over the back of my neck, and on my wrist; the skin stayed bunched up, wrinkled the way she had left it. I wasn't used to letting people touch me gentle. It didn't feel like anything.

"She's dehydrated," Uragiru said to Son, who was there beside her. "She ought to be in a hospital."

Son frowned down at me, said, "I dunno." He tried to hold my eyes, but I wouldn't let him.

He makes her so mad, and I can't see why. I'd never have been smart enough to figure out that sort of thing, and my brain's too foggy to hold on to anything for long. Everything I saw and heard and thought seemed too far away to matter much.

"Do you know what a hospital is?" she asked the Saiyajin.

"Yeah, I do," Son Goku said, and shuttered a little. "But going to the hospital never made anyone feel better."

He took one of those medicine beans out of the leather bag that was tied to his belt, and plopped down cross-legged in front of me. Tried to talk me into eating the thing, but his words were just noise, wind blowing in my folded ears.

After a while the Saiyajin gave it up. He shifted to his knees, and leaned in to take my lower jaw in one hand. "Be careful," Uragiru warned him. "She bites."

"I know it," he said, as he pried my jaws apart carefully to drop the bean down my throat. But there wasn't any reason to fight him. It didn't matter. It wasn't happening to me. I'm already gone. They couldn't stop me from going.

Uragiru stayed after Son had gone away. "Aiken, please," she said. Pleaded. That was strange enough to catch my attention despite everything, and I shook my head, trying to clear some of the wooziness out of it. "That Bulma woman - have you met her? - says she can make us a new ship. We're going to go home, Aiken."

"Where…" I began, but lost the thread of the thought as the effect of the bean hit me like a jolt. I wished that the Saiyajin hadn't given me that thing; it was only going to make this take longer. "Where's home?" I said, and thought, She doesn't have a home. My Mistress's ship is gone, and Urigiru's planet blew up years and years and years ago.

"I can take you back where the other Inujin are. Don't you want to go see your family, Aiken?"

I remembered how it had been, in the bad old days, for people who had lost everything. People who'd been off-planet when their worlds had been destroyed, or who were part of the small groups that Frost sometimes snatched out of harm's way just before a purge began. Sometimes they'd just up and decide to stop living. Uragiru didn't, but for the longest time I'd hear here crying from behind locked doors. She didn't think anyone heard, and maybe Frost and my Mistress never did. The rest of the time she just kept right on working. There was so much danger then, so much to look out for, there wasn't time to stop and think about anything else. If Furiza'd found us we would have been just as dead as those others.

"This is what it feels like when your entire world goes away, huh?" I asked Uragiru.

She looked at me like I'd sucker punched her. Stood quickly, one mechanical movement. "Aiken, that's complete bullshit," she said.

I was let to be alone after that, but sometime after it got dark Juunanagou came swaggering out from among the shadows. He crouched down in front of me, his skinny arms draped bonelessly over his knees, and said without preamble, "What are you so fussed about? She wasn't even nice to you."

I didn't say anything. It wasn't worth it.

"No, really, I don't get this," he said, as though I had argued with him. "You should be happy. You can do whatever you want now, and no one's going to try and boss you around. You've just got to learn how to be your own person… dog… alien… thing, you know?

"Look - last time somebody figured he could make himself my boss and master, I killed his ass dead myself, and that was the best moment of my life." He'd been sounding really pleased with himself, but suddenly he turned serious. "Not that I wouldn't have minded some help with that, if anyone had bothered to give me a hand sooner."

He wanted something from me then, I could tell from the way he paused and watched me, but I didn't know what - he wanted me to ask a question, maybe. But my tongue was thick and dull and dried out, and I just wanted him to go away.

The seriousness had gone away again, replaced by pretend wistfulness, and a mocking sing-song that stressed random words oddly. "It's too bad Son didn't just kill her when she wanted, you know," he said. "_If_ it had been _murder_, the dragon balls could have _wished her back_." He waited again, watching me with one eyebrow cocked. "Those Namekjin, they make some crazy stuff, you know. I wonder what else they do, besides making dragon balls? Do you know anyone, who might know where I can find a Namekjin to make me something weird and powerful?"

If I answered him, maybe he'd go away and leave me alone. "I don't know," I said. "Go ask Uragiru. Finding out stuff like that is her job, not mine."

His hand came up to cover his face with a slap. "Oh, fuck's sake, you're too stupid!" he said, from behind his palm. "Uragiru did it, you freaking drooler."

"She didn't even," I said. I'm very tried, and my head hurts, and I wish that he'd just stop teasing me. "Uragiru's weak. She never could have. My Mistress just got sick, is all. She got sick and died."

"Okay," he said, throwing his arms up as he stood back up. "That's it. I'm out. I'm finished. You're too stupid to help. Shit, you aren't even entertaining."

Then he left too, but his words wouldn't go away with him. They nagged at me, scratching around in the corners of my brain. Uragiru, he said…


	20. Chapter Twenty: Juunanagou

_Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you alive. _- Sid Vicious

**Juunanagou **

They'd put up a new house since I was up here last week, a little prefab beach bungalow. It sat in the field behind Son's own house, apropos of nothing, stuck in among the turnip plants. The curtain were drawn, but I could see that the lights were on behind them. The flickering glow of a TV cast strange shadows across the ground.

On the other hand, Son and his family are the sort of people who go to bed with the sun, and their house was dark and quiet.

There was no lock on the door. I slipped in silently, and drew the door closed behind me. It was dark inside, and I called up a little ball of energy in my palm, just enough to light my way.

If I was Son - and if there's one thing I'm thankful for it is that I am not - and I had something useful and of great value in my possession, where would I keep it? I paused in the hallway, pondering the question while the sleeping house breathed around me. And then I headed for the kitchen.

Non one upstairs was going to see the kitchen lights, so I killed the energy ball in my fist and flicked them on, then looked around the kitchen. Apparently, keeping a growing brood of Saiyajin crosses fed took more equipment and supplies than I'd have expected to find in the kitchen of a small hotel. Pans and skillets hung from ceiling hooks above a series of three wood-burning stoves, and bins of flour, rice and potatoes lined the few empty stretches of wall. An industrial-sized fridge took up most of one wall, and on the other side of the room there was a similarly giant kitchen sink. A potted herb garden grew in the window front of the sink, and through the leafy tops I could see the bungalow across the yard.

The thing I was looking for was sitting on the edge of a wicker shelf, near the refrigerator. I reached up and took it down, feeling the slight weight shift inside the small leather bag. I untied the knot and drew the bag open; one, two, three, four wrinkled little sensu beans.

Mine now.

I turned to leave, and saw Son Goku standing in the kitchen doorway, bleary-eyed in a pair of white boxers and nothing else. As old as he has to be, I'd have thought he'd have started to go to seed by now, but under his clothing he was still nothing but pure muscle. Son blinked at me, then reached up a hand to rub his eyes. "Juunangou," he said slowly, "What're you doin' in my house?"

"I'm not in your house," I told him seriously, quickly balling up the little bag of sensu in my palm and crossing my arms to hide it in the crook of my elbow. "This is a dream. You're sleep walking. Go back to bed."

He blinked again, before saying groggily, "Come on. What are you in my house for?"

Damn it. Well, it had been worth a shot, anyway. "I'm leaving," I said. "Right now."

"We already tried t' give her a sensu bean," he told me, which said that he'd been watching me for longer than I'd thought. It wasn't a happy idea. "It didn't do much for her. Aiken's more stubborn than that Frigid was," he drawled, pensive and utterly oblivious to how much I did not care about his opinion. "That other one didn't even know what she wanted one minute from the next, but Aiken isn't mixed up about anything. She's really just dead set on dyin'." He shrugged.

So scratch that plan, I thought. I'd have to come up with a better idea than the sensu. But what I said was, "I'm confiscating these sensu beans from you. You can't be trusted not to waste them on stupid shit.

"What if someone who's actually dangerous shows up here tomorrow? What if everything in the universe depended on you have just one more sensu bean, and you don't, because you've been handing them out like candy to disreputable strangers? What then, huh?"

"Aw, I don't think anything like that's going to happen." He said it sadly, like a kid who was trying to cope with the idea that his birthday had been canceled forever. "I guess Boo must've been the last big strong thing out there."

"The fuck's a 'Boo?'"

"Oh yeah. Mr. Satan made that wish, didn't he?" he said, vaguely. Then he added, "I'm hungry," and there was nothing ambivalent about that statement. He stepped toward me, opening the door to the fridge and bending over to look inside.

He was right there next to me, off his guard and practically naked in more ways than one as he rooted around in the fridge, the back of his bare neck exposed. I could do it - I really think I could. He's completely powered down and barely half-awake, and he'd never see it coming in time. I could cave in the back of his skull or break his neck right now, and I don't even think it would be hard, and I could be gone before anyone knew I was here. It wouldn't even matter if he narked on me from beyond the grave, because his people would never find me.

He paused, and drew his head from within the fridge's interior to glance up at me. "You hungry?" he said.

If I jammed the palm of my hand into his face right now, would the force be great enough to break his nose and drive the resulting bone shards into his brain? Shame not to test a theory like that here and now, but instead I said, "Where's Uragiru?"

"She's next door," he said, and hooked his thumb back toward the window without taking his eyes off the contents of the fridge. I looked back at the bungalow, and saw the light of a TV screen still flickering behind the drawn curtains. "Bulma let them borrow a capsule house. An' she's still mad at me from dinner last week. I dunno why."

"She's pissed because you don't know why she's pissed," I told him.

"So why don't she just tell me?" he said, finally emerging from the fridge, his arms loaded with sandwich fixings. He deposited the supplies on the counter, and I moved closer to the window. I focused my mind's eye on the bungalow, and confirmed for myself what Son had said, and then some; Uragiru was in there alright, and so was Yamcha. And there was something else too, something that was getting closer fast.

"Don't be stupid. If she did that then being pissed at won't be nearly as satisfying."

And I thought to myself, You knew, and your friends knew. Maybe you didn't know everything - maybe you didn't know that Gero was using humans this time, or that three months before the alternate Trunks warned you against him Gero had snatched a matched pair of dumb-as-shit runaways off the streets of Western Capital to cut on - but you knew he was up to something, and you knew where he was. You could have stopped it anytime, but you didn't. You didn't even think. Because you wanted to fight the strong guy.

But I was never Gero's puppet and I won't be Son Goku's punching bag. I don't belong to anyone but myself. And I won't tell him anything he should have been able to figure out for himself. If he gave me the same fuzzy and awkward apology that he so often subjects his wife to, aimed only to pacify anger, I think I would lose my shit entirely.

"I don't know what to do with them, you know?" he said. His back was to me and the window, so he didn't see the lumbering from coming toward the houses from the valley below. I turned to glance at him, to see if he felt Aiken coming, but he was lost in his own fuzzy thoughts. "Normally, when aliens come here they just wanna fight me, or wreck the planet, or something simple like that. But these guys didn't even bring someone strong enough to be worth fightin' with them, and I still dunno what they're after. It's weird."

Aiken past by the window, a swift, hulking shadow in the night, and then Son did pause. "What was that?" he said, turning, a slice of bread still in one hand and a knife in the other.

"I guess the Dog finally put two and two and two together," I said, watching out the window as the shadow plowed through the front door of the bungalow without even slowing down. "Good for her." There was a pause, and then a blast of ki lit up the night, and then Yamcha started hollering. Behind me, I heard Son's knife clatter across the floor.

"You might want to do something about that," I said, idly, but when I turned to look at Son he was already gone.


	21. Chapter TwentyOne

_In the long run, we are all dead. _- John Maynard Keynes

**Aiken **

It didn't click at first, what Juunanagou had said. I had to chew it over.

I thought about the Namekjin. About how they'd had something on that soggy little planet of their that Frost and Uragiru had worked so hard to figure out, and how Furiza had almost died trying to get for himself. I thought about how that thing had turned out to be the Dragon Balls, and how they had those here, too, and about how something that powerful could be so useless when it counted. And I thought about how there were Namekjin here, somehow, and about the Namekjin that I'd seen Uragiru talking to a couple of years ago, and how last week she'd lied and said she hadn't. There was something in all that, so I thought about it for a long time, but the answer always stayed just outside of my reach.

But Juunanagou had said, "Uragiru did it," and even though I still didn't understand how that could be so, the more I thought about it the more I knew that it was.

There was only one thing to do.

There was no reason to hurry. I walked up the hill toward the house of Son Goku, feeling the blood come back into my limbs with the movement, hard muscle happy to get one last workout. That sensu bean that the Saiyajin had made me eat had been good for something, after all; I knew that I was strong enough to do what needed doing.

There was a new house on the Saiyajin's mountain top, a smaller one, stuck back behind his own. It only made sense that Uragiru would be inside it. When I hit the door it folded like rice paper.

The front entrance lead straight into the kitchen of the little house. The old scar-face was in there when I came in, crossing the room with a bowl of snacks in hands, and he turned quickly when he heard me. When I knocked him down the popcorn went flying, the white arc mingling with a spray of red.

I kept going. I followed the sounds of recorded voices down the short hallway. It was shadowy in the sitting room that I found at the end of that hall, the only light coming from a flickering television screen.

She's sleeping. Sprawled out on the couch in soft native clothing, like she belonged her, like she's one of them now and the rest of us never were. Like my Mistress wasn't dead because of her. I leaned over her.

She was sleeping, but when my jaws closed around her throat she woke up real quick. The angle was awkward but good enough, and when she woke with a sudden jerk my feet slid along the floor but I didn't lose my hold. From the corner of my eye I could see her lips moving, trying to make some sound in the wake of sudden and complete airlessness. I could see one eye, glassy with confused pain, until it found me and found focus, understanding dawning unsurprised. Her fists came up to beat at the sides of my neck, and I ground down, tearing though skin and meat.

I felt the heat building as her hands suddenly slid down toward my gut, so I knew what was coming. I felt the energy ball blow my center out through my back, and as suddenly as that my lower half turned numb and useless. I kept my hold, so it didn't matter. Bracing myself against her shoulders, I jerked my head back sharply, taking what was left of Uragiru's throat.

After that, things started to get hazy. I slid down onto the floor, but that didn't matter either, because I'm done here now. I've done everything I needed to do, and I'm more than ready to die.

That's what I wanted to say to the Saiyajin when he rolled me over, but there he never gave me a chance to speak before just shoving another one of those damned sensu beans down my throat.


	22. Chapter TwentyTwo: Juunanagou

_Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality [in which] we live... The sarcasm is not only related to today's reality but also to history. History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor. _- Mahmoud Darwish

_It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye._

- American proverb

**Juunanagou **

I guess it's possible that I've let this go on a little longer than I should have. My sister always said that I couldn't tell when a joke had stopped being funny.

Son might have been able to teleport himself directly to the source of the action, but I had to go on foot. I was several seconds behind him when I entered the little house through the front door.

I passed Yamcha in the hallway, slumped against the wall with bloody hands pressed over his eyes. His face was pretty much fucked, to the point that I had some trouble sussing out what had originally gone where, but it wasn't anything that he was going to die of right then. Still, he wasn't any fun to look at like that.

I paused to nudge the side of his leg with my foot, and he startled but didn't lower his hands from his face. There was blood welling between his fingers. "Who's there?" Yamcha said, voice crackling with confusion. He added in a panic, "I can't see your ki."

Or much else, I'd have bet. "Hold out your hand," I said, tugging open the bag of sensu beans. After a moment's hesitation, one hand came down from his face, offering me a better view of what Aiken's claws had done. "Shit," I said, appreciatively. "She got them both, huh? Gross." I dropped the bean in Yamcha's palm, and his groping hand found its way to his mouth.

"Oi, Juunanagou," Son's voice came from down the hall. I turned instinctively toward the sound, so I missed seeing how the sense bean did its work on Yamcha's face. When I turned back, he was all better, though still bloody.

It was long past time for me to bail, I decided, so I tossed the bag of sensu beans at Yamcha as he climbed to his feet. He caught the bag, then turned and rushed for the living room doorway, but by then Son was in the hallway, blocking his way. "What the hell, Goku?" he shouted. "_Move_! She needs a sensu bean now, or she's going to die -"

"Sensu beans ain't going to help Uragiru," Son said, but he took the bag from Yamcha's slacked hand anyway. "She can't swallow nothing right now." Yamcha began to sputter something outraged, but Son's eyes had gone hard and serious. "No, listen; You're wasting time. I need you to go over to my house, and call my boys. Tell them to come here, right away. Do it now."

How old is Yamcha these days, anyway? At least sixty, I'd guess, maybe more. Not as good as he used to be, and even at his best he was never good enough to measure up beside Son. Sometimes, if you watch him closely enough, you can see how wasted he feels, how cheated. But when Son told him he should go, he went.

I meant to follow Yamcha out, but when I turned to leave Son grabbed me by the wrist. I turned my head to look at him sharply, and saw that his eyes were still different; Focused. All there. Adult. I began to consider the possibility that he might know more about what I'd known than he ought to.

"I need you in here," he said, and tugged on my wrist so intently that I'd taken three involuntary steps forward before it even occurred to me to resist. I don't like feeling trapped. I felt the sweat start to break out on my forehead and my heart start to pound as I pulled back against him, trying to put the breaks on this whole mess. He dragged me through the doorway without even seeming to notice.

In there, it was all over but the dying. "What a fucking mess," I said, taking in the scents and sounds of carnage as I tried to work out the narrative painted in the splashes of blood along the walls and across the TV screen. Something stupid fluttered in my stomach. "Shit."

Aiken and Uragiru had meant to kill each other, as far as I could tell, and to that end they'd done a good job of it; that either of them were still alive seemed to be more or less a formality. Aiken was on her back in front of the couch, and the scorched hole in her gut was big enough to pass a soccer ball through. Her eyes were turned toward the doorway, but they didn't look at me or anything else in this world. Her breathing was heavy and unevenly paced.

Uragiru, on the other hand, was still with us. Her eyes watched Son and I steadily from above the ragged, gapping hole in her throat, and that tear burbled as the blood flowed out, and it whistled and hissed when she tried to take a breath.

There was something that I should have been doing, but at the moment I couldn't remember what. My brain didn't seem to be properly linked to my body, and I wondered distantly if I was suffering from some sort of malfunction. Really, I hadn't realized that there could be so much blood in just two people.

I only remembered that Son was dragging me along when we came to a stop in front of Uragiru. He released my hand, and I jerked it away, rubbing at the wrist. "Put pressure on the wound, like this," he said, demonstrating by holding his own big hands cross-wise over Uragiru's ruined neck. "Don't press too hard - just enough to keep as much blood in as you can, understand?"

"No fucking way," I said, taking half a step back as I felt that thing in my stomach jump again. The floor was slick under my shoes, and for half a second I thought I was going to fall. I looked down at the tracks I'd left in the red mess, and thought about the rivers of blood my other self must have waded through. I don't understand anything about myself. The only thing I knew for sure what that the smell was making me sick to my stomach, and I was perilously close to throwing up.

With a frustrated huff, Son caught me by both wrists and pressed my hands against the wound. It was hot and sticky and wet, and it sucked at my palm when she breathed in. Hot air blew between my fingers with each exhaled breath. Uragiru's eyes were on me now, sharp and intent, demanding an answer to the question that she didn't have the voice to speak. "I don't know what the fuck he's up to," I said, and turned my head around to see what Son was doing behind me.

He was crouched over Aiken, a sensu bean held between forefinger and thumb. She was fighting him - jerking her head from side to side - but not very effectively, and it only took Son a moment to catch her by the muzzle and force the thing down her throat.

In the near distance I could feel Goten's ki moving toward us, and Gohan only a few kilometers behind him.

An instant after she swallowed the sensu bean Aiken was up with a roar, heading toward Uragiru and me. Son cut her off and knocked her down, but she was up a moment later, trying the same trick again. Son hit her harder that time, and she didn't get up quite so quickly.

Son stepped over the couch, and put the palm of his hand over my fingers, splaying his own fingers so that they curled around the side of Uragiru's neck. "You're in trouble when we get back," he told Aiken, as she staggered to her feet to charge at us again.

He raised two fingers to his forehead. "Uh-huh," I said, and tried to pull away. But it was too late, and before I knew anything else he'd taken me along to somewhere I'd never been before.


	23. Chapter TwentyThree: Frigid

_I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything. _- Chuck Palahniuk

**Frigid**

This was where I found myself; amid sand, an endless expanse of sand, sand drifting over itself in lazy waves. Black, that sand was, and the sky a bloody red. Those were the only colors here, but for those of the other dead.

The place seemed sparsely populated, but there were some others in the vicinity, and I felt their eyes watching me as I twisted around to brush at the grit that clung to my tail. The stuff was everywhere - pelting my skin and blowing against my face - and it was persistent. It wanted to stick.

I folded my legs under myself and floated upward, watching the sandy plain spread out below me. The grit was less pestering from on high, and at this vantage I could see for a great distance, though there was little enough to look at. The denizens of this Hell seemed more inclined to move in groups than alone, and I wondered in passing if that was somehow significant. There was a ghostly look to some of them - faded and unsolid, as though they were not entirely a part of this place.

Frost seemed to spot me only a moment after I noticed him, a singular gray form cresting one of the mountainous black dunes. He craned his horned head upward to look at me, lifting one arm in greeting. I lifted my own head, a more subdued motion, and lowered myself to the ground. Then I waited, watching him stride toward me on foot.

And waiting, I remembered what Uragiru had said, that he'd meant to use the dragon balls on Nameksei to do something - anything - to put a stop to my family. Now I wondered; if the Super Saiyajin hadn't surfaced when he did, might have Frost really found a way to bring them down? And I wondered, too; If he'd had the opportunity back then, when I was… different from how I am now… would he have moved against me as well as the others? I was acutely aware that I no longer had anything to hold as leverage over him. If I asked now, I'm badly afraid that he would answer me truthfully.

"You look well," I said, when he'd closed the gap. I said it simply to have something to say, but it was true as well. He'd never been muscular, but the utter fleshlessness that had marked the final stages of his decline was gone. Returned to his old, lanky self, he looked fit, and also younger than he'd seemed a week before. The illness (murder, I heard Enma's servant say again, and wondered; How could someone in such a position of authority be permitted to make such grievous errors?) had not worn me down as harshly as it had Frost, and yet it seemed to me that I too had been in some strange way restored. At least, I realized suddenly, the bone-deep weariness that had been with me for so long was gone. It had been replaced by… very little in the way of physical sensation.

"Good health seems to be one of the benefits of death," Frost agreed. He'd meant it to be wry, I could tell, but instead it sounded strained, marred near the end by a faint quaver.

I could tell then also that he wanted to reach down and touch me, but I jerked my head sideways in a motion so minute that only he would perceive it, refusing to permit contact. There were too many eyes on us, and my understanding of the powers and whims of the creatures who ruled this Hell was too imperfect to chance it. Circumspection had always been the rule, both when my family still reigned and afterwards. Frost made himself a target often enough without me making it blatantly obvious that I might be hurt through him.

I expected that he would understand this at once, but instead he was taken aback. Cut, though he tried to hide it quickly enough. He watched me as the silence dragged on, distant and resolved, as though he were awaiting a blow. If he meant to hurt me in turn he'd found a way. I'd never done any such thing - I'd never once struck him, or ever bid Aiken to do so for me.

"This is my fault," he said, at last. He said it as though he already knew that I knew, and I did; if he hadn't spent so many years playing in the dirt of so many worlds, maybe neither of us would have ever taken ill. We'd both known that from almost the beginning, but when you are dying together that is not the sort of recrimination you put to words, not if you don't wish to tear down what little's left. Until now, it had never been spoken out loud.

"I don't see any point in addressing this."

"I made a mistake."

"I know you did," I said. "It's over with. There's no going back now."

Still, he pressed on. "She was so angry, after what happened - how couldn't she be? Her entire world, I can't even pretend to understand - but I thought, 'This will get better in time. It will just take time.' But all these years… only waiting for the opportunity. I should have seen it, but I never thought -"

"You're babbling," I said. He never babbled. It frightened me. "Stop it."

"We'd been together since we were children," he said. "Almost like a sister to me. I don't understand what -"

"You're talking about Uragiru," I said, realizing it suddenly.

"Yes, my lady," he said, and then he stopped abruptly. "Didn't Lord Enma tell you?"

"I didn't give that creature any leave to be lord over me," I said, speaking quickly - almost babbling myself - taking refuge in flippancy to hold back whatever seemed to be coming. "Honestly, he's entirely too big for anyone's good. And he looks like a bloody Saiyajin. All that horrible hair… I'm sure that he didn't have anything to say that would be of interest."

He began to weep then, suddenly, and I could not have been more shocked if he'd sprouted fur. "What is it?" I said demanded, but I believe that by then I already knew.

"I'm sorry," he said, and repeated, "I should have seen -" Then all at once he was fierce, wiping viciously at his eyes with the edge of his palm again and then again. "But it isn't fair. We didn't do it. I never had a hand in anything like that… and she knows, she knows how hard I tried…"

There were people watching. I could feel their eyes on us as I stepped forward to take Frost's hand in my own, tugging softly until he moved down to his knees in the sand, down to my own eye-level. If they'd come any closer I'd have discovered if one ghost could destroy another, but they kept their distance. They had their own problems, no doubt, their own lingering feelings of guilt, their own fears for the future, and their own aching senses of betrayal. It was possible, too, that some of then recognized me, that I'd put some of them here myself. For whatever reason, they left us alone while I held Frost's hand between both of my own, trying to imagine some way to make it stop shaking while I kneaded the fingers between my palms. "I don't want to be blamed," he said. "I don't want to be dead for something I didn't do."

It was a long time before he was able to speak again. Longer still, until he was able to explain to me what he knew.


	24. Chapter Twenty Four: Juunanagou

**EDIT: Okay - question guys. This fic has gotten more than a 1300 hits in the last two days (which makes up about 1/6 of all the total hits that it's had in the year and a half that I've been working on it. I love that the story is getting this much attention, but could some please tell me where the heck you are all coming from? O_0 **

_No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. _- Nathaniel Hawthorne

_Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire. _- Kurt Tucholsky

**Juunanagou **

I'd never been up to Kami's place before now, but my sisters has. She told me about it once, back when she was still worth listening to.

And wasn't she an awesome bitch back then - meaner than I've been. Listening to her back then, you wouldn't have thought that there was a thing about the midget that she found likeable. Once the thing with Cell was over, and we found each other again, the first thing she did was spend an hour just ragging on the guy. She wouldn't shut up about how ugly and creepy that bald runt was, but when I tried to add my own commentary on the little freak she got pissy with me. Looking back, that should have been my first clue that something was up.

The landing must have been jarring for Uragiru, though really, she seemed past noticing. No couch up here on the look-out, not where we happened to reappear, anyway, so she fell a short ways before coming up against the marble flooring. At some point since I'd last seen her she'd traded her armor for regular clothing; the jeans, as skin-tight as the spandex-stuff Vegeta's always been fond of, were new, but the flannel shirt was worn and over-sized and had probably been Yamcha's. I didn't guess he'd ever want it back, now that she'd gone and gotten it ruined. But when Uragiru hit the stone tiles the jolt sent that little-egg thing rolling out of the flannel's front pocket.

I scooped it up and put it in my own pocket before placing my hands back the way Son had shown me, trying like a good little helper to keep as much nasty blood as possible from staining the nice white marble tiles. I took a second to set my face the way I figured it ought to look, then I turned to see if Son had noticed anything.

Son was talking at some new Namekjin that I'd never seen before, gesturing expansively while he stood there in his boxer shorts. "- So me a favor and heal her up real quick, okay, Dende?" Son finished, as Piccolo came up to stand behind the other Namekjin.

The one Son had called Dende was new to me, but he was slighter than Piccolo, and seemed younger, and was sort of twitchy. Standing there with his fingers wrapped around the staff of a walking stick that he didn't need so tightly that his green knuckles were almost white, he looked like the sort of guy who'd be easy to spook and easier to pressure. But he must have had some guts in him somewhere, because he looked down at Uragiru, then he looked up at Son and shook his head. "No," he said. "She's done bad things. She'd killed people. I'm sorry, but I won't do it."

Piccolo stepped forward, crouching to study Uragiru's face more closely, his lips drawn thin in a tight and puzzled frown. Her eyes had gone distant and fuzzy, but when he leaned over her they took focus again, locking with his own as some sort of mutual recognition dawned. She mouthed something, trying to speak for the first time since I'd gotten roped into this mess. "Nu," I thought she said, though it was hard to hear over Son's hurt and confused sputtering. And then; "Ale."

Piccolo stood and turned back to Dende sharply. "Do it."

"She wants to hurt Goku. Can't you feel it?"

The egg-thing had started to heat up as soon as I'd touched it, and by then it was like a red coal in my pocket. It wasn't though to hurt - not yet, anyway - but if it burned a hole through my pocket or set my jeans on fire one of them might just notice. "Will someone please fucking do _something_ - soon?" I shouted. And then I added for effect, "She's dying over here, you know!"

"I know her," Piccolo told Dende. "She's a friend." And when the other Namekjin stepped forward, startled into doing what he'd been told to do, Piccolo snarled at me, "Get out of his way, boy."

"Fine by me," I said, straightening quickly. A thin wisp of smoke had begun to come from my pocket, and as discretely as I could I slapped my palm against my thigh, smothering it. But the egg just kept getting hotter. I slipped it from my pocket before it could burned a more noticeable hole - not that my jeans weren't already ruined, with all the blood that had been flying around - and secreted it in my palm while Dende leaned over Uragiru.

He laid his hands on her, and almost as quickly as that she was whole again, sitting up with a sputter and a gasp. "_Nail_," she said to Piccolo, able to pronounce the word - whatever it meant - clearly now that her vocal cords were back in order.

"Yes," he said. "Among some others," and damned if the fangy bastard didn't _smile_. Then he said something I couldn't even begin to make sense of, in a language I'd never heard before.

Uragiru dropped into the same tongue, speaking haltingly at first but seeming to find the flow of it with surprising ease. Listening to her, Piccolo grew serious, interrupting her with string of interrogatives, grim and intense. Dende cut in with his own comment, his worrier's frown growing marginally less worried, but still stuck around.

I was dancing the egg from hand to hand by then, barely bothering to keep the blistering thing hidden anymore, since no one was paying attention to me anyway. A few minutes before my hands had still been wet with blood, but the heat of the egg-thing had baked it down into crisp, black flakes. They drifted to the floor, leaving a speckled trail on the white marble as I turned to leave.

It was long past time for me to bail, anyway. I couldn't understand them, but Piccolo's tone had been growing steadily more grave - quite a feat for that guy - and Uragiru's answers more evasive and halting. Son might be too stupid to ask the right questions, but it was only a matter of time before the Namekjin got to the bottom of things. As exciting as the coming fireworks were bound to be, I didn't want to be around if Uragiru decided to turn narc. That Namekjin's always had it out for me, and if his newly rediscovered BFF twisted things around enough, I could see myself taking more heat for this shit than I'd care to, thank you very much.

But I'd only gone a few steps when I heard Uragiru shout at my back, "Hey!"

When I turned back the chest pocket on her shirt was turned out, and her eyes were on me, and were all poison. "Yeah?" I said, daring her to make an issue of it. The Namekjin were watching us both more keenly by then, and Piccolo's frown had grown into something more like a scowl.

She paused, her eyes darting to Piccolo and then back to me, caught between the fear of discovery and… some other - bigger - terror. Uragiru started to speak, but then she saw how I was bouncing the egg from hand to hand, and she seemed run out of words to say.

Then the two Namekjin saw it, too. Well - I couldn't keep the damn thing hidden anymore, anyway, not when it was almost too hot to barely even touch. The stupid thing was playing favorites; it had behaved itself for Uragiru. Piccolo's mouth fell so far open that the lower jaw seemed to come unhinged, but Dende stepped forward unsteadily, saying, "You mustn't - Everyone, stay clam…"

Then, critically oblivious to it all, standing there with his back to us while he watched the butterflies flirting with the flowers in the palace garden, still dressed in nothing but his boxers, the great idiot spoke up. "Is Mr. Popo cooking something?" Son sniffed loudly. "I think it's burning…"

I ground my teeth together, fighting the urge to go over there and slug the stupid idiot, and the thing in my hand ratcheted up its temperature suddenly. As hot as it had been, now it was ten - no, a hundred times hotter, hotter than it should have been possible for it to be, so hot that it burned through my skin and muscle like a red coal through paper. "_Shit_!" I said, and I didn't just drop the damned thing. I _threw_ it.

The egg skittered along the ground, and when it touched the tiles the marble cracked and exploded from the heat, launching jagged, blackened slivers of stone into the air. When it finally rolled to a stop, the tile it rested on fractures, the smoking cracks spreading a meter in every direction. The egg set there for a moment, in its glassy pool of melted marble.

And then, a crack rippled up the egg's side.

"Oh god," Dende said, and that was when I figured we were pretty much completely fucked. And then Piccolo turned and ran for the palace garden, so I knew for sure.

"Feel that," Son breathed, his boxers rippling from the waves of heat that were coming off the egg. "_There's_ the strong guy."

"The hell is it?" I shouted, against the roar of the crackling air.

Dende was the only one to answer me. "A wild god," he said, and turned the stink-eye on me like it was some how _my fault _this shit was going down. "Quickly - what you were thinking about when you hatched the thing?" How much Son's looks would be improved by a busted nose, but I wasn't going to tell _him_ that. "_Tell me_," he demanded, when I didn't answer.

"Don't tell me what to do," I said, but against my own will my eyes flicked toward Son, and the bloody Namekjin caught the glance.

"Goku?" he said, with horror. "It was Goku?" He didn't wait for me to answer. Instead he started shouting at Son, telling him to be careful, to watch out, to not let it touch him.

While all this was going on, Uragiru had managed to make it to Son's side. She was speaking at him, urgently, but I couldn't make out everything she was saying. "… will follow you. Go north… isn't a game. If you hesitate, if you screw this up… ashes. Everything will be ashes. North, understand? Ice caps, snow, even cold water -"

And then, with a roar that sucked in the surrounding air and blew it back at us in a blistering rush of heat, the egg exploded. The burst of light that accompanied the explosion was blinding, and I raised my arm to try to shield my eyes from the glittering shine.

Trying to see the thing that came from the egg clearly was as impossible as staring at the sun. The brilliant thing could only be glimpsed in short, darting glances before the glare filled my field of vision with blinding white spots, but what I managed to see was all wicked beak and curled black talons and flowing, fiery feathers. It was tiny, when it first came out of the egg, but like the flame of a lit match dropped in a lake of accelerate, it grew quick.

The thing screamed, its shriek like a bomb dropping from the heavens, and launched itself at Son.

He had time to bring his arm up to guard his face before the thing's talons found him. It wasn't strong enough to tear his flesh with those claws, but that didn't make a lick of difference, because where its feet locked around Son's wrists they chard skin and roasted the muscle beneath.

Son roared and powered up, adding his own yellow flame to the whirling fiery dance. He tried to fling the thing from his arm, but the phoenix clung, its heavy wings beating at his head and chest, raising blisters whenever they made contact with skin. Son reached for its snaking neck with his free hand, and the phoenix's head darted out of reach, spitting venom at his face. The stuff glistened like napalm, and then suddenly Son's hair was on fire.

When the jet of water hit the phoenix it shrieked, but it didn't take its claws off Son. I turned to find the source of the water, and saw that Piccolo was back again, a garden house clutched in his green hands. He circled Son and the phoenix as they flailed, drenching them both. The cloud of steam that arose as the water sizzled against the thing's flaming feathers quickly filled the look-out with stifling, dripping clouds. I could barely see the Namekjin or Uragiru through the mist, but Son and the phoenix glowed through the drifting steam.

The phoenix screamed again, this time with outrage as Son flung it from his arm. It landed in a sizzling heap by my feet, its plumage soggy and as dull as the ash from a spent cigarette. I lifted my foot to stomp on it, to break those blistering wings or maybe crush the slender neck, but before I could its head darted up again, and it spat its flame sole of my boot. The heat was incredible - greater than any ki blast I'd ever come up against - and I fell back on my butt, clawing at the boot to get it off before the venom ate through it.

Its plumage began to sparkle again, and then it reignited in a burst of flame. "It's up again!" I shouted.

But by then Son was up as well, poised in the sky above us. He looked down, taking in the scene below him, and his eyes were green and hard and they looked through me. I hate it when he gets like this. You can't tell what he'll do when he's like this, can't count on him being a sap or a tool or letting anything go easily. "Piccolo!" he shouted down, "Don't let them go anywhere until I get back, okay?"

_Them? _I thought. Then I said, "Oh bullshit."

Then the phoenix arched upward, flinging itself toward Son. Son pivoted in the air quickly, flying past the edge of the look-out with the phoenix close on his heel. He lead it away from us, off toward the northern horizon. A few seconds later, and they were gone from sight.


	25. Chapter Twenty Five: Frigid

_The past is never dead. It's not even past. _- William Faulkner

**Frigid **

Given the situation, I felt that there was no pressing need to get on with things, and so I waited as patiently as I could for this disturbance to pass. When Frost seemed to be himself again, after he'd dried his face and found his way back to his feet and asked my pardon, working ruefully to regain some of his accustomed aplomb, I asked, "How was it done?"

He was brittle still, and I'd been concerned that the question might cause him to break down again, but more than anything else it seemed to frustrate him. "I don't believe that even Lord Enma or his staff understand that perfectly," he said, slowly, feeling the thing out as he spoke. "They are certain that a Namekjin was involved somehow, and they aren't at all happy about that. It seems that the power structure here disapproves of any sort of mysticism that tampers with matters of fate. I understand that the amount of paper work involved in correcting for such occurrences is astonishing." Watching him, it seemed to me that I'd chosen correcting in setting him on his topic, because caught up as he was in unraveling the political minutiae of this place, he seemed better able to distance himself from the intensely personal nature of the betrayal.

When he paused, seeming to mull over some new, painful aspect of the thing, I tried to push the discussion further away from ourselves. "The Namekjin seem to have been at the root of any number of the universe's problems," I said.

He didn't argue against that, but he paused briefly in such a way that it seemed to me that he must have considered doing so. What he said was, "Well, but when Lord Enma mentioned the Namekjin, I felt certain that he must have been mistaken, because there weren't meant to be any Namekjin left alive. But later I began to think…" He started pacing, his tail sweeping crescent-shaped waves in the sand as he walked his short circuit in front of me. "I began to think, and then remembered something. Some two years ago, Aiken claimed to have seen a Namekjin in the market of one of the border planets. I should have investigated the matter further, but Uragiru assured me that Aiken had been mistaken, and that it had not been a Namekjin." He paused, turning his head to look at me, and I could see that he meant to claim the blame for this as his own as well. "My Lady -" he began, but I cut him off.

"Only a few days ago Aiken said the very same thing to me. And when Uragiru corrected her I dismissed Aiken's claim without a second thought." I had, I knew even then, been very harsh with Aiken when she'd argued the point, and now I felt as though I'd been in the wrong in that. But she'd join us here soon enough, I was sure. And she'd forget that I hadn't listened to her when I ought to have. She would have to; she did not have it in her to know how to blame me for anything.

"It was not long afterward that I began to feel ill," Frost said.

"But that still does not answer for how it was done," I said. "It could not have been dragon balls."

He paused for only an instant before asking, "You know of the dragon balls?"

I remembered then what Uragiru had said - how much of it had been lies, and how much the truth tooled to cut? - and how they'd both conspired together to keep the existence of the dragon balls from me for so long. And I wondered; if Frost had been able to find some way to bring down my family, back in the days when I was… different from what I am now, would I have been a target as well? "I know about any number of things." When he hesitated, I added, "We'd do best now if you could tell me the truth, and all of it."

Frost's voice was oddly unsteady when he answered. "Right. Of course, the dragon can't be made to harm anyone. But…"

"But?" I pressed.

"When I was on Nameksei - do you remember, back when Aiken was still small?" I nodded, and left unspoken; back when _they_ still lived. "When I - I and Uragiru - were there, we noted several small clues that seemed to indicate that the Namekjin had once had access to some mysticism beyond the dragon balls. There had been so much destruction there. Large swathes of the planet had been scorched down to the bedrock; even places that had not been burned were in the grips of severe drought. The surviving Namekjin - there were very few of them, you understand - had been in the process of replanting their world, but much of the damage was still apparent.

"Additionally, it had been thought that the Namekjin had a fairly advanced technological culture - there were some records that seemed to indicate that they had mastered space flight at some point in the distant past - but when we got there all that had seemed to have inexplicability disappeared, as the Namekjin population we found was living very simply.

"Something catastrophic had obviously happened, but the people were extremely circumspect about the details. They would say, 'the weather changed' or 'it suddenly became very hot very quickly,' and would change the subject pointedly. They never trusted me entirely, truth be known, and it was obvious that they were hiding something."

"If you'd targeted their children, I imagine you'd have gotten your answers very quickly."

Sometimes, I believe that he willfully misunderstands me. "Uragiru did manage to speak privately to some of the smaller ones on several occasions. Of course, she was always very good at getting people to tell her things, at seeming as though she were a friend…" He paused then, but pushed it aside to go on. "The children weren't as tightlipped as the adults, but the events in question seemed to have occurred before they'd been hatched. Uragiru said that she had been told that someone had made a bad wish, and that it had hurt a lot of people, but that the type of people who made wishes like that were all gone now, so it couldn't happen again.

"We were never able to uncover much beyond that. Our tentative conclusion was that there _had been _Namekjin who could create dragon balls - or something like dragon balls - that possessed a greater destructive force than those that were currently in use, but that their creator or creators had lost control of that power, and had been wiped out in the ensuing chaos."

"I see," I said. "But if an individual with such powers had gotten off-world before all that occurred, he might be alive somewhere still today."

"It's possible," he agreed. "But there's so many factors I can't account for, so many missing pieces. I don't understand… why it came to this. Or how."

He was being hopelessly naïve, but there was no benefit in telling him so. It's always been his folly, imagining that he could have friends. He'd always believed that, if he could disassociate himself from his race, mitigate enough of the damage that had been done, then the universe would cease to hold him accountable. I nurtured no such illusions, and I knew that for that reason things had always been easier for me.

For some reason, it was then that I remembered Son Goku. "The Saiyajin!" I said, thinking back to the dinner from a few nights before, how Son had seemed to take ill, and - I realized now - so suddenly after he'd inadvertently given Uragiru cause to hate him. How horrified I'd been, believing that it had been my fault, that I'd become a disease vector, the tool of some power that was beyond my control, even as it was in the old days.

I didn't have it in myself to like such an irresponsible creature, but I've no desire to leave Uragiru to destroy him as she did Frost and myself. Whatever errors that the Saiyajin might have made, the fact remains that he was the only reason that I ever had a chance at being anything more than a less impressive reflection of my brother, anything other than a complete monster. I know that I nothing approaching good. But I know also that I would have been so very much worse, if the Saiyajin had not intervened when he did.

"The Saiyajin…?" Frost repeated, doubtfully.

"I'll get you your answers," I promised him. "Tell me - who's in charge here? I'll need to meet with someone in authority."

"The Oni manage things here, I suppose, as much as they are managed."

"The Oni?"

"Perhaps you saw them, in coming here? The smallish blue fellows, with the suits and glasses?"

"And the absurd horns, yes. Where can I find one? I must make arrangements to speak with one of the living." I would, I decided quickly, bypass speaking to the Saiyajin, who could not be trusted to follow through with what needed done to put an end to this. I'd go to his more dependable little friend instead; that Kuririn was strong enough to be up to the task, and dedicated enough to Son that he would, I was sure, move to protect him. I would see that, by this time tomorrow - if there was any such thing as tomorrow here - Uragiru would be here with us.

"I don't think that's permitted…" Frost said.

"They will make an exception for me." Frost only looked dubious, so I added, "For the Saiyajin, then. I understand that he's considered to be an important person in this realm." And I asked Frost again, "Where can I find an Oni?"

"They only seem to pass through on occasion. I've spotted handful from the sky over the last few days," he said. Then he added quickly, "But what Saiyajin do you mean?" but I was in a hurry now, and already airborne, scanning the endless expanse of black dunes and onyx mountains for a powdery-blue face.

I was in luck, quickly spotting one of the officious little creatures in the cannon between two rocky, mountainous rises. "There's one," I said to Frost when he caught up with me, pointing down into the canon.

I flew lower, hailing the Oni as I went. He looked up from his clipboard sharply, but only spared me an short glance before turning narrowed eyes on Frost.

"You," the Oni said to Frost, "are not where you are meant to be!" and he glared down at his clipboard, flipping through the pages furiously, as though looking for some way to prove this claim. I suppose that it was because he was so focused on those pages that he didn't notice the hulking form as it slipped from the shadows of a rocky crevice until it was entirely too late.

The struggle was brief and violent, and for all that it only last as long as it did because the Saiyajin, who had obviously been enjoying himself, stretched the thing out a bit. When it was over with, the Oni's body laid in the sand, head turned around the wrong way, extremities still twitching. The Saiyajin straightened, and it was only then that he seemed to notice Frost or myself. He smirked with one side of his mouth when I landed in the sand across from him.

He was a big thing, this Saiyajin, at least equal in size to my Aiken. More brutish-looking than was even to be expected from a Saiyajin, his long, wild hair ran all the way down to his ankles. He seemed vaguely familiar, in some half-remembered, unimportant way, but I could not place him exactly. But when he sneered down at me, I knew that I had been recognized.

"Was that entirely necessary?" I demanded, motioning down at the dead Oni. "I was attempting to have a conversation with -"

And then a second Saiyajin emerged from the shadows, and I found myself suddenly speechless. He started toward me on stiff legs, his steps coming very slowly. There was something between a smirk and a sneer spread across his countenance, and I noticed suddenly that he'd somehow acquired a scar over his right cheek since I'd seen him last.

"Son Goku," I said, trying with very little success to govern myself. There was something in the Saiyajin's eyes, you see, something that hadn't been there before, and it scared me very badly.

I took a step back as he advanced, and then another. Off to my side, the bigger Saiyajin was roaring with laugher. "How… how is it that you're here?" I asked, trying to

cast my voice above the second Saiyajin's uproarious noise.

He brought up his hand and struck me open-palmed across the face. In truth, it was not so great a blow, but I had in no way expected it off him. Behind me, I heard a very small grunt of shock escape Frost, but he knew better than to interpose himself in such business of mine. Blinking rapidly as I looked down at the Saiyajin's green and black boots, I brought my hand up to my face, feeling the sting as though it were someone else's pain. I believe that I might have stood there for three entire seconds, trying to make sense of it, when I realized suddenly that this Saiyajin was not dressed as Son Goku had been, in brightly colored and loosely cut rags, but rather in armor. It was only then that I began to understand that this was a different man from the one I'd found on Earth.

"My boy's name is Kakarotto," he said, and the answer came to me; this was the Super Saiyajin's father. Then he told me, "My son killed your brother." It was a challenge - a taunt. The fool imagined that he could hurt me with such knowledge, but he knew nothing. As I cast about mentally to find someway to hurt him as he'd tried to hurt me, I wondered fleetingly (for there's no sense in dwelling on such wistful thoughts) what we might have had to say to each other if he'd approached me differently.

I thought of Son Goku, how abnormal he was, such a poor representative of his race's standard. Of how he'd taken a name suitable for a native of the planet he'd claimed as his own, a planet where he lived among natives that any normal Saiyajin would have despised, peacefully and without trying to dominate them, almost as though he imagined that they might be his equals. And then I thought - not for the first time since meeting him - that if Son Goku felt any outrage on behalf of his species, he could have killed me out of hand simply by dint of my associates, as I had so expected him to do only a few days ago.

Well, then it was easy to know how to cut this stranger, the father of a man I barely understood.

"He didn't do it for _you_," I said, and saw that I'd found the right track when his face twisted up in such a way that I knew that the Saiyajin knew that I had spoken true.

The taller Saiyajin grunted appreciatively, and when I turned to look at him I saw that he agreed.

Behind me, Frost said, "Son Goku didn't do it at all, truth be known. Better to ignore this one," he advised me. "He's little more than an old fraud."

I turned to look up at Frost, thunderstruck. Behind me, the Saiyajin barked, "Semantics! My boy defeated Furiza on Nameksei -"

"He undoubtedly did, and good on him, but that's not what you just claimed, is it? Of course, it is not."

"Son Goku didn't kill Furiza?" I asked Frost, too astounded right then to wondered how he could know any more of what happened than I, or even how it was that he knew who Son Goku was. "Or - or the others, either?"

"Prince Vegeta's boy killed Furiza and your father," Frost told me, without taking his eyes from the smaller Saiyajin. I don't think that I had ever seen him look at anyone with such open and frank distaste before, but then, he had never liked the Saiyajin; he blamed them for much of what had happened, perhaps even more than they deserved. "The matter of Koola was more complex, but it would be most accurate to say that Vegeta dealt the finishing blow in that."

"But -" I said, but then I did not know what else to say. This changes everything, I thought, but an instant later I was no longer so sure of that. I racked my brain, trying to remember if I had glimpsed any creature resembling the prince among Son Goku's crowd. "But I was there.. there on Earth… for days, and no one - not a single person - mentioned that!"

"_You _were on Earth?" the bigger Saiyajin asked me sharply. I'd almost forgotten that he was there, but I turned to look at him now.

"Your name," I remembered suddenly, "is Raditsu, is it not?"

I could see his ego swell at being recognized. "I am Raditsu," he said. "Yeah, that's me." And he asked again, "You were on Earth?"

"I was."

"I suppose that's why you're here now - did Kakarotto kill you, too, then?"

"No," I said, and wondering why I should wish to tell such a person such things even as I spoke, I added, "I wanted him to, but he would not."

Raditsu threw his arms up. "_Typical_," he growled morosely. "Seems like I'm the only person he ever met that he figured was worth killing."

It was that instant that the smaller Saiyajin chose to take another swing at me. But now that I knew what he was - or rather, who he wasn't - it was a simple thing to sidestep the blow as I approached Raditsu, knocking him off his feet with an idle flick of my tail as I passed by.

"Are you with him?" I asked Raditsu, glancing back at the smaller Saiyajin as he crawled to his feet, sputtering something outraged around a mouthful of sand.

"Can't pick family," Raditsu said, and shrugged.

"No," I said. "Brother?"

"No. He's my father."

"I'd have taken you for the elder."

"He managed to get himself killed years before Kakarotto offed me."

"Furiza?"

"Of course."

"Typical," I said, and was repaid by an easy, overly enthusiastic laugh - this one thinks everything is funny. To my shock, more and more I was finding that I liked him. "You'll be Son Goku's brother, then?"

"_Kakarotto's_ brother, yes," he corrected pointedly. "So what're you going to get up to now?"

"I've no idea," I said, and shrugged. "I've only just gotten here."

"I've been here a long time," he told me. "I couldn't even tell you how long it's been. There's too much quiet here, that's the problem. This place gets in your head, if you let it. Here's what you should do - this is good advice, okay? - just pretend that everything is the way it used to be when you were alive. Otherwise, you're apt to just melt away."

Frost took a step forward, ready to say something about that, but the smaller Saiyajin beat him to it. He strutted up to Raditsu, shoving him back away from me, and the bigger man staggered under the blow. "_Collaborator_!" he spat up at Raditsu, and shoved him again. Raditsu grunted and nearly lost his feet, taking a few more unsteady backwards steps, and I understood suddenly that, big as he was, this one was not very strong at all. "Even with all the shit you've pulled, I never thought I'd see the day when a son of mine would up and -"

"Weren't you listening?" Raditsu said, cutting him off. "I know you aren't a scientist or anything, but weren't you even _listening_? Kakarotto _got along _with her."

His father turned back to look at me, as though looking for some way to disprove what Raditsu had said - which, I might have agreed in a different situation, went too far - and I took the opportunity to twist the blade. "He was very hospitable," I said primly, and discovering that it was true even as I spoke, I continued, "In fact, I do not believe I'd ever been treated with such genuine kindness before."

"There, you see? There's your Kakarotto for you. You don't know what he's about. He isn't anything like -"

The other Saiyajin drew his fist back and slammed it in Raditsu's face. Raditsu staggered and dropped down to the sand like a sack of bricks. The smaller Saiyajin shot off into the sky in a blast of ki-flame, and a few seconds later he'd disappeared over the horizon.

Raditsu made his way back to feet slowly, rubbing at his nose as though to brush the blood away, though of course there was none. "This place works on you," he said again. "Unless you can pretend that everything is the way it used to be. Bardock's better at it than me, is the only thing. Me, some days I can't even remember who I'm supposed to hate."

"Are you well?" I heard myself say.

"No," he said. "No, I don't think I am." And he repeated, "This place just wears away you. I don't think I'm going to be me for much longer. I guess it doesn't matter. There's isn't anyone left here who'll miss me."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I never did anything but what I was made to do, the way I was taught to do it. How am I supposed to feel bad for doing my job? How am I supposed to make up for being Saiyajin?

"I don't feel guilty for any of it - that's the truth. But sometimes, I feel like I should feel bad about it. Like, there's something wrong with me - some piece missing or broke - that I don't feel bad for killing all those critters, and _that _does make me feel bad. It makes me feel like I don't want to be who I am anymore. Do you get what I mean?"

"No," I lied quickly. "I think he must have hit you harder than you realize. You aren't being very coherent, I'm afraid."

"Stick to that line, if you want to stick around here." He nudged the dead Oni with the toe of his boot. "You start to doubt yourself, they'll take away everything that makes you who you are.

"Shit," he said abruptly. "You two want to come eat dinner with me?"

"I… dinner?"

He hefted the dead Oni up from the ground and draped it over his shoulders, and I suddenly understood. "Why the hell not? My folks aren't going to have anything to do with me anymore now, I know that much. They already hated me on Kakarotto's behalf, anyway. I'm done with them now, I guess."

"I can't imagine eating… anything… given the circumstances." Feeling a touch of panic, I looked back at Frost. "You aren't hungry, are you?"

"Not at all," Frost said, his face carefully neutral. "Are you really… do you really feel so hungry as that?"

Raditsu shrugged, and on his shoulder the Oni's head lolled bonelessly to the side. "I'm Saiyajin. I'm always hungry."

"I see," Frost said.

"Guess if I go and let myself get reborn, I won't be Saiyajin anymore then, will I?" He seemed to want an answer to that, but I did not even fully understand that question, and Frost remained silent. "Yeah, I guess the odds of being Saiyajin again would be pretty slim, everything considered," he answered himself, and then he turned his back on us.

"See you around," he said, as he started off in the opposite direction from where the other Saiyajin had gone. "If I'm still around here, anyway."


	26. Chapter Twenty Six: Juunanagou

_[People] react to their chaotic world in different ways. Some panic and run… anything to escape. Others went for pointless sure-loser confrontations so that they could fortify their rationalization and say, "Well, we tried and did our part" then they copped out too. Others sick with guilt and not knowing where to turn or what to do went berserk._

- Saul. D. Alinsky

**Juunanagou**

The sixth or eighth time - who's really counting? - Piccolo slammed me down to the floor of the palace's plaza I practically landed at Uragiru's feet. She'd been standing near the palace, her arm wrapped around one of the pillars that fronted the building like she needed the support to ground herself, watching the horizon that Son had disappeared into like she expected to see something there.

When I stood up again so I could get back to kicking Piccolo's ass for him, Uragiru said to me, "It's useless, trying to fight someone that powerful directly. Stop being so stupid."

"Don't tell me what to do," I said, twisting my tongue against the side of my cheek as I spoke to avoid prodding the tooth Piccolo'd busted. "Bastard's been training," I muttered to myself, and went after him again.

The next time he knocked me out of the sky it was with a kick across the back of my head, and when I hit the tiles it was face-first, and hard enough to send a plum of pulverized marble dust floating up around my face. I lifted my head carefully - a feat that would have been a hell of a lot easier if the world would've stopped spinning for one damned second - and saw that the face-shaped pit I'd left in the stone was at least a foot deep.

Craning up my head, I watched Uragiru come forward, and tried to suss out which of the three hers I was looking at was the real one. She stepped over me, calling something up at Piccolo in the Namekjin language.

"Speak Japanese," I said, trying like hell to keep my voice from slurring; it didn't work out so well. "So's we can all under… can understand yous."

"Speak _what_?" she snapped, flipping her hair out of her eyes as she glanced down at me.

"Thas right." I figured that I needed to get back up soon, but suddenly that seemed like an awful lot of work. I brought my hand up to the back of my head, feeling gingerly at the place where Piccolo had kicked me, and I found a goose egg there the size of my fist.

"You have a concussion," she said down at me. Her face didn't seem to want to come into focus for me, so I couldn't be sure if she was sneering at me or only frowning.

"You have… a stupid face."

Piccolo landed in front of us, and - my fingers clinging to the cracked marble to keep the spinning tower from flinging me off - I lifted my head to watch Uragiru approach Piccolo. She was speaking the Namekjin tongue again, quickly and with urgency, like she knew whatever she was trying to get him to buy was a tough sell.

"Stop that at once," he growled sharply, lips skinning back to show those ugly fangs of his. He doesn't play, that Piccolo. Oh no he does not. "I won't hear you defile my people's language any longer. That you brought this thing to my world - knowing as you must have known, how dangerous it was - is unconscionable. Do you understand me? This will not be forgiven. You are alive now only by Son Goku's sufferance." He added, looking down at me, "The same is true in your case as well."

"Don't pretend that you aren't just looking for an excuse," I said, and decided that I'd rested long enough. My head pounding dizzily, I got up one knee, but I wasn't sure that to do next. I think something in my foot had busted against his ugly face last time around, and now it didn't seem willing to take my weight.

"You shouldn't imagine yourself to be that important," Piccolo scoffed. "Stay down, boy. If you do otherwise, you will regret it."

"Don't tell me what to do," I said again. Then I pressed my hands against the marble tiles, and - balancing my weight on my palms - I hopped up from my knee to my foot. I straightened, then, bearing the majority of my weight on my good foot.

I must have taken too long blinking, because I never even saw him come at me. But somehow Piccolo managed to knock me across the side of the head when I wasn't looking. I fell back down on my butt, and my hand came up to cup my ringing right ear.

Piccolo turned his back on me and Uragiru then. He stood there, arms crossed and spine stiff, his ridiculous cape flapping in the breeze, while Uragiru tried to argue with his back. "You should understand this," she was saying. "It couldn't be allowed to happen again -"

"Be silent!" he roared, whirling on her with sudden and startling fury. She stepped back, shock spreading across her face, and fell quiet.

"Bad kids club," I said to her, woozily. "You in it now."

They both turned on me, and snapped out in unison, "Shut up."

"Don't tell me what…" I started to say, but lost track of that train of thought. "Fuck off. You guys are assholes."

I started to get up again, but the way they movement made my vision cloud convinced me that maybe that wasn't the best plan ever. Dende was standing in the distance, blurry and indistinct, and I shouted over at him, "Hey! Little help?"

He hesitated before speaking up. "I believe that it would be best to delay any action until Son returns."

So that was what we ended up doing, waiting for the better part of a long and boring hour. I didn't have anything I wanted to say to any of them, that was for damn sure, and the Namekjin obviously weren't feeling chatty anymore, no matter how much Uragiru might have wanted to speak with them. I was still a mess and she was worse, clothing crusted with her drying blood. The smell didn't get any better as time went on, either.

Piccolo must have felt them coming first. He'd been playing statue for the last half an hour, but suddenly his head tipped slightly to the side, as though he were listening to something in the distance and to his right, and then he stepped over toward the far edge of the lookout.

"Oh!" Dende said, stepping after Piccolo. "And Goten, too."

A moment later, the two of them appeared as specs in the distance, moving toward us slowly. After a while, I was able to see that Goten had something massive and dead-looking draped over his shoulders; the phoenix, grown huge. When it had first come out of its egg, the thing had been no larger than a humming bird, and the creature Son had guided away had been roughly turkey-sized. The thing that Goten let fall from his shoulder as he landed on the look-out was at least as big as a moa. I wondered how much bigger it might have gotten if it hadn't been killed - would it have just kept growing, like a flame provided with an endless supply of fuel? In death, the thing was as drab as cold ash, gray and pale, its soggy feathers plastered against its body.

For his own part, Son wasn't in much better shape. Big chunks of his hair had burned away, and his skin was dotted with burns, but his arms were the real bad part. They were lobster-red, craggy with blisters and pitted with open burns. The hands themselves were blackened, the skin charred to a crisp and peeling back to show the roasted muscle underneath. I wondered if that was why he hadn't just teleported himself and Goten here - if shaping his right hand into the gesture necessary to do so wasn't just too unthinkably painful, or maybe just psychical impossible. His face was shallow and streaked with ash, yet his expression was strangely serene. He's in shock, I thought at first, but then I wondered if it wasn't just the afterglow of having faced a deadly opponent and won.

Son was unsteady on his feet, but when he began to stagger forward Dende stepped up to catch him before he could fall. Under the Namekjin's hands, the blisters and burns had faded to nothing, and life came back into his barbequed hands. The places were his hair had burned away, I was delighted to see, remained bald.

"Thanks," Son said.

"How did you kill it?" Dende asked him.

"It was tough," Son said, grinning like a soft-head eight-year-old. "It was _really_ tough. I lead it to a cold place, like I was supposed to, and it didn't seem to like that much but it didn't slow it down any. I didn't wanna touch it if I could help it - because you know why - so I tried hitting it with a ki blast, but that just made it get bigger and meaner.

"Then I tried to knock it down in the snow, like Uragiru said to, only that didn't kill it either, it just slowed it down for a little while.

"So I thought to myself - it's just a big old bird, right? And how do ya kill a bird? Why, you just ring its neck. So the next time it came after me, I knocked it down into this big icy lake that was there, so it would cool down a little bit, then I caught it around the neck. Only, all the water steamed away before it was dead, so I kinda got burned up some."

A worried frown crept over his face. "It was like a sort of animal, right?"

The two Namekjin glanced at each other quickly, and then Dende turned back to assure him, "Yes, Son, it was only an animal." He's not a good liar, but good enough to fool Son.

"Okay, good. I figured that if it was a person or something it woulda talked at me, anyway.

"Oh!" he said, suddenly, "I almost forgot." He turned to Goten. "Give me that thingy," he said.

Goten reached into his pocket and took something out. "The fight was all over by the time I got there," Goten said. "But I picked this up."

Son took it from him, and held it up to show Dende; a small egg, like the one from before, its shell a glittering mottle of black and yellow and red. "It sicked this up right before it died," he said. "This one didn't get hot when me and Goten touched it, though. How come?"

"It requires a certain level of focus and intent, to turn a phoenix god to one's own will," Dende said, which I took to be a polite way of saying that those two weren't smart enough or mean enough to make the god do what they wanted.

"Oh," Son said. He seemed to notice me for the first time. "Geez, what's wrong with Juunanagou?"

"He insisted upon leaving," Piccolo told him. "I convinced him otherwise."

"Can't talk sense at him, anyway, I guess," Son said, frowning like he'd remembered just then he was suppose to be pissed at me. "He's looking pretty spacey, though. Can you patch him up for me, Dende?"

Even as thick as my head was right then, I could tell that the Namekjin didn't want much to do with me. But he seemed to consult his mental balance book and decide that he owed Son something, and he stepped up and put his hands on me. It was a warm feeling, whatever power he was working on me, and too comforting to trust, and I pull away from him as soon as I felt like myself again.

"I think," Son said, with an expression that showed that thinking was hard on him, and he resented being made to do it, "that you two should explain to me what this has all been about."

"I ain't taking the heat for this one," I told him, and hooked my thumb at Uragiru. "This was all her fault. It was her, start to finish."

Uragiru turned to look at me, her eyes bored, apprising what she saw and not putting any value on it, and I felt something in my gut turn over. _Don't look at me like I'm something less than you, _I thought, really wanting to hit her across the face so she'd stop looking at me like that. _I can do things to you that would make what the dog did look like a day in the amusement park_.

When she finally dismissed me it was to say to Son, "He's telling you the truth, or close enough, anyway. He fucked everything up, but he didn't do it intentionally; his only goal was chaos. He's an idiot and an anarchist; he plans nothing and understands less, and he had no idea what he was doing.

"The intelligent course of action would be to kill him before he does more damage. He's a danger to the people here, whether you're willing to notice it or not."

"I'm not going to kill any -"

"Then send him away. I'm tried of seeing his face now."

"Juunanagou, would you get out of here, please?"

"_She's _calling the shots now - just how the hell does _that _work?"

"I'm pretty angry with you right now, Juunanagou. I guess maybe you've been making stuff harder than it needs to be for a lot of days now. You should really go."

"_Don't tell me what to do_."

"_Juunanagou_ -"

"I'm goin'," I said. "But I'm goin' because I want to go now. You get that? Shit, I'd have gone an hour ago, if it wasn't for that big green son of a bitch over there. I wouldn't even have come, if anybody'd asked me in the first place."

And that's what I did. But before I was out of earshot I heard Uragiru say, "What now?"

And Son said, "Hell if I know. You people are an awful lot of trouble, you know that?"


	27. Chapter Twenty Seven: Aiken

_A verse from the Veda says, "What you see, you become." In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement. _

- Deepak Chopra.

**Aiken**

Both of Son Goku's boys had come in here almost as soon as the Saiyajin had disappeared with Juunanagou and Uragiru, but since then Goten's left. He took off when he and his brother started to get the idea that Son Goku was in some kind of trouble - I don't know what kind, and they didn't seem to, either, but Goten went to go see. Maybe it's Uragiru again, maybe the same kind of trouble my Mistress and Frost came up against. It'd serve the Saiyajin right, I guess, for interfering.

The other one - Gohan - stayed behind. He was meant to keep an eye on me, I guess, to keep me from going after Yamcha again, or maybe to make sure the weak scar-face didn't try to do something dumb. But I don't need to do anything bad to him, or any of the Saiyajin's people. I don't care anything about Yamcha; he just got in my way before, was all. There's only one person I'm after.

He was in the doorway now, the scar-face, watching me hard, and Gohan was by the window, eyeing the both of us near as intently. At first he'd tried to talk Yamcha into going somewhere else, but he just stayed where he was, looking at me. Somebody had given him one of those medicine beans, and it had fixed up what I did to his face, and that was why he could stare at me like that now. He seethed quietly, like Frost and Uragiru did when they were mad, like all weak people do - like my Mistress used to, when her family was still alive. When you aren't strong enough to fight back you've just got to keep it to yourself.

Finally, he said, "I want to know why you did that."

I don't want to talk to him, so I don't. Justifications, rationales, pleas for understanding - those are for a different kind of people from me. Inujin don't need them. I'm accountable to my Mistress, and only her, and that's all.

He kept on talking at me for a while after that, but I wasn't listening at all. Once he figured that out, he finally gave it up.

Over by the window, Gohan said, "They're back."

I turned my head to look out the window, and saw Son Goku and Goten land in the field behind the two houses. Uragiru was with them - better now, somehow - and I felt my fur bristle at the sight of her, but I waited. I stayed where I was.

Chichi came out to meet them, loud and full of scolding complaints that masked bigger fears - yelling about how he'd disappeared into the night, about all the trouble his "friends" (does she mean us?) were making, about how he was parading around in his underpants. He'd been carrying a big old gray bird, but now he held it out to her defensively, like it was a shield. "I got dinner," he said, trying to defuse her.

She wasn't to be silenced, but eventually she ran herself down, and traded him a set of clothing for the dead bird. It was a big thing, that bird, at least five times her own size, but she hefted it up easily enough, and - still muttering to herself primly - she took it around to the other side of the house.

Son Goku pulled the shirt and pants on, then dropped down on his butt to tug his boots on. While he was busy with that, I saw Uragiru turn and walk out of my field of vision, heading toward the front of this house. Yamcha saw it too, and turned down the hallway, toward the front door. I stayed where I was, and so did Gohan.

Outside, Son looked up and, his expression puzzled and a little annoyed said, "Hey, where're you going?" Then he stood up and stepped out of view, too.

I heard the front door open, and Yamcha said something that I couldn't quite make out, but the tail end of it sounded like, "… we should just get out of here."

Uragiru's voice was louder than his. "No, I need to talk to her. Is it safe?"

"Gohan's in there… I guess it is. Why'd she do that? It was crazy… she just came rushing in here like she'd gone crazy." There was a pause, and then I heard him say, with confusion that bordered on outrage, "Goku! What happened to your hair?"

"That stupid phoenix spit in it," a heard the Saiyajin say.

Then there were footsteps coming down the hallway, light and quick - Uragiru, and Son Goku and Yamcha behind her. Gohan moved to put himself between me and the doorway, but I just stayed where I was.

"Aiken."

I looked up at her. Stared hard. "I can't do anything right now, Uragiru. They'll just stop me. I know that. But later on, just as soon as I see my chance. I'm going to get you. Even if it takes years, I'm going to get you."

"That's good, Aiken. You should stay angry with me. You should hold on to that. It's a good reason to stay alive."

"I'm going to get you."

"Aiken," Gohan said, in a voice that tried too hard to be reasonable; that one has a limit even if he tries to pretend that he doesn't, and I'm pushing up against it, I guess, but I don't care very much. "If you'd just tell us why you're so angry, we might be able to -"

"She killed my Mistress," I growled at him.

"Okay, now that's just fucking absurd," Yamcha spoke into the long silence that followed.

And then I couldn't just be calm anymore - I thought that I would be able to, but I couldn't. I charged at Uragiru, but Gohan caught me - big stupid idiot caught me too easily - and held me back. "Calm - Calm down," he said, as I struggled to break free. "Aiken -"

"Why are you protecting her? You don't even know her, so why don't you just mind your own business and let me _go_ -"

"No, Aiken - _listen_," he said, and the arms around my chest suddenly got tighter. If I provoked him into crushing me, then I'll never be able to get Uragiru, so I forced myself to become still. "She was sick, Aiken. She just died because she was sick. It wasn't anybody's fault -"

"Uh-uh," Son Goku said. "Aiken's right. She had a Namekjin… thing. Like the Dragon Balls, but not - but with a bird instead - and she got wishes off it. She made it happen."

The mood's turning now - they see that _she's_ the one who did a bad thing, and they're all looking at Uragiru like she's somebody they never saw before. I started to hope that maybe they'd let me kill her soon, after all. She saw the shift too, and spoke quickly to make a defense for herself. "None of you fully understand the situation here," she said. "I promise you, that if you knew the entire story, you would agree that I only did what ought to have been done a long time ago."

Damn these people. Damn them, because they're listening to her now. Unhappily, uneasily, yeah, but they're listening. Uragiru had paused, seeming to expect something from them, but when they stayed quiet she went on. "It is impossible for one mind to even hold an accurate conception of the hundreds of billions of lives that were stolen away by her kind. Even just the number of individuals she killed personally can never be counted with any certainty, so great is the number. _Worlds_. Worlds, and everyone and everything they held. You mustn't forget that. My entire planet, everyone there -"

"That wasn't even her, and you know it!" I shouted, outraged, fighting to break free of Gohan's grip. "That was Furiza, and no body knew it was going to happen -"

She did know it - she knew that it wasn't my Mistress that did that to her planet - but the way she paused, confusion fluttering across her face, showed that said that she'd gotten the thing sort of mixed up in her mind, that maybe she didn't always remember that she knew what she knew.

"No," she said, slowly. "Not my world. But other people's, Aiken. Other worlds. Don't you remember how it used to be? How many rivers of blood did you wade through to keep Frigid in good standing with her family, to keep the Empire growing?"

I should be able to defend my Mistress - more now then ever, because she isn't here anymore to fight for herself - but I stumbled over that. I stopped, thinking back to worlds I hadn't had a reason to think about for decades. How many planets was I set to cleaning up, between the years that my Mistress got me and Furiza died - six? Or was it eight? Son's people where watching me now, I realized with a start, and I rushed to find something to counter Uragiru's words. "That - that was a long time ago, Uragiru! That was years and years ago, and everyone did that back then. Everybody did it. You did it, too - don't pretend that you didn't."

"It's never going to go away, Aiken. It doesn't matter how many years go by, it's never going to go away. I am never going to forgive them for what they made me do. Someone has to account for this."

"You're lying," I said. "I know that you're lying, because Frost - Frost never made you do any killing. Frost never made you do anything like that, and you killed him, too. You did that to him, and - Uragiru - he _liked_ you! So why - why'd you do that to him?"

"No, he didn't make me kill anyone… he didn't make me do that." She looked at the people around us. "Can any of you imagine what it is like, to look at a group of one hundred people and tell them, 'I can take twenty of you,' and the rest have to stay back, knowing that the purge will begin soon. Knowing that you could take twenty-five or fifty - not all of them, never all, never enough, but more - if he'd just push her a little harder for more resources, if he'd just do _anything _to impress upon her that his _hobby_ was a matter of life and death, if he'd just do anything to make her _wake the fuck up_?

"Frost never saw individuals, Aiken. He never saw past her." She paused, shaking her head. "No, that's not true - he never saw her, either; he just saw what he thought he could make her be.

"Do you know what made me decide that… that I was going to do it? He was talking about babies, Aiken. He thought that if he could talk her into hatching something for him, it'd soften her up. Like when he got you for her, Aiken. He thought that if there was something that she had to care about, something that needed her to care about it, she'd figure out how to care about something other than herself.

"But even _she _wasn't that stupid or selfish, Aiken. Even _she_ knew that there's nothing worth the risk of unleashing some new, uncontrollable little monster on the universe. That's where his priorities were. He'd risk the rest of the universe for a shot at saving her from herself."

"That's not fair, Uragiru," I said. And I said to the rest of them, "This isn't fair. Uragiru's better at talking than me, and she's smarter, so it isn't fair. Even - even if a little bit of what she's saying is true - it isn't fair that they aren't here to speak up for themselves."

I looked up at Gohan, trying to convince him to let me go, to let me go do what I needed to do for my Mistress. "He made them hurt for so long," I said. "And they never even knew _why_."

Gohan's arms suddenly loosened around me, then dropped. "You're the one who made my Dad choke at dinner the other night. That wasn't a fish bone - that was you. You tried to kill my Dad. My Dad never… he never let anything bad happen to anyone if he knew how to stop it from happening, and you tried to hurt him anyway."

And Goten said, "Maybe you gotta just get out of here. You should just go somewhere else, Uragiru, because I… I don't know what, but you ought to just go away right now."

"Yeah," she agreed, and now she wasn't looking at any of them, but she was blinking fast, like she was trying to hold back tears that she didn't want. I remembered how much she used to cry, back after what happened to her planet. She'd lock herself up somewhere were she didn't think anyone could hear, and just cry and cry. Frost said that I shouldn't let on that I knew, because she wanted privacy so we should give it to her. I don't think that my Mistress ever noticed. "I think I'll do that." She turned and left, and when the front door closed behind her it was with a small, muted click.

The weird thing is, even though she was out for Son Goku's blood, I think maybe she likes them. Or, at least, she liked the idea of being like them.

"What a frigging mess…" Yamcha said, awkwardly, after the silence had grown big enough to crowd the room. "Everybody's got it rough, you know? You can never tell what something looks like to somebody else, but everybody's got it rough."

Son hadn't said anything for a long time - it was hard to tell how much of all that he'd even followed - but he spoke up now. "It's okay, Yamcha. Bulma went with Vegeta, right?"

Yamcha's face went ugly real quick. "What the hell, Goku? Don't you make fun of me about that now -"

"Whoa." The Saiyajin's hands came up, palms open. "Whoa. I wasn't. I just meant that no body's going to blame you if you go with her. Right?"

"She isn't the bad guy."

"I know it. She ain't nothing like Vegeta used to be, either."

"Right," Yamcha said, and then he left, too.

I tried to go, too. I wanted to follow after her, because she was right about one thing anyway; when blood's been spilled, someone has to pay the cost of it. All the words and reasons and rationales in the world don't make it go away.

"Stay," the Saiyajin said to me. "I still gotta talk to you."

"About what?"

"If it's murder," he said. "If it's murder, and someone didn't just die on their own, then the Dragon can wish them back."


	28. Chapter Twenty Eight: Frigid

"_What we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that 'walks in us.' There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them... Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea."_

- Henrik Ibsen

"_Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'" _

- Charles M. Schulz

**Frigid **

I watched Raditsu stride away across the sandy plain, shoulders slumped like they carried the weight of worlds, and not merely the body of one small Oni. I had the sense that, whatever sort of person he'd been in life - not a good one, surely - that person was almost gone now. He would not be here for much longer. "This place eats away at you," he had said. "Sometimes I can't even remember who I'm supposed to hate."

The thought is chilling, but not without some appeal.

When the Saiyajin could no longer be seen, I turned back to Frost. "Will there not be consequences, for the killing of that Oni?"

"It's doubtful," he said. "From what I've seen, this section of Hell is poorly policed. In any case, death seems to be more or less an inconvenience for Oni - it goes with the territory, working down here, I suppose."

_Down here_, I thought, and wondered: Does he think that I am stupid - that I am not actually paying attention? Or is he being intentionally obvious?

He went on. "My understanding of the procedure is that that Oni will be issued a new body and put back to work fairly directly. The main complaint that I've run into is over the volume of paper work involved in documenting such instances - apparently, the number of forms required are staggering."

Barely a week in residence in this Hell, and he already knew more about the way of things here than I might have uncovered for myself in a year. Well, but it had always been like that; Frost had his sources, all the little voices that had put enough trust in him to willingly whisper all sorts of facts and rumors and opinions, while they'd only tell me as little as they could get away with, and then still only what they believed I wished to hear. By now he would know everything that was of importance, and a great number of things that were not. He'll have… he'll have spoken to everyone.

There was a craggy wall of black stone to my back. I turned now, brushing the sand away from one of the smaller stones to make a place to sit. Which allowed me to have my back to him when I asked, as nonchalantly as I could, "What, then, constitutes criminal behavior?"

He took longer to answer than I might have expected, and finally I turned and looked back at him. "I'm afraid that I don't understand the question," he said, regretfully.

"I feel that my position here in tenuous," I told him, stiffly, certain now that he was playing the fool. "I should like to know what actions might result in punitive measures, so that I might avoid them."

I slipped up onto the stony perch, folding my legs under myself; this place is so consistently miserable. He cocked his head, mild, consolatory confusion coating his features like a mask. _"You aren't where you're meant to be," _I thought, remembering the words that the Oni had spoken to Frost just before Raditsu had killed him, and wondered how much longer Frost would carry on with this charade.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I still don't -"

"That Enma creature. He implied - no, there was no implication, it was a threat - that it was within his jurisdiction to place me some place far worse than here." Stupid of me to argue with him, in retrospect - I can not imagine what I was thinking, for certainly I'd enough experience with such people to know when it was in my own best interest to keep silent. "'With the incorrigibles,' he said. He said that for those, there was 'no parole.'"

That, then, provoked a different reaction. Now, Frost's confusion seemed not only genuine, but also deeply frightened. "That can't possibly be correct," he said. His tail had begun to flick from side to side in agitation. "Perhaps… perhaps you misunderstood what he said to you?"

I'm not being seen, I realized then. He has never seen me; he sees someone else, the person that he had always wished that I was. And that had been well, for the longest time that had been to my benefit. There had been extended periods of time when, for his sake, I had been able to act as though I was someone else - someone better - than I was. At times it had even felt _true_, when it had seemed possible that a person might learn how to change for the better, and that I had done so.

It had been well, I think that I must be seen now. Not in a forgiving light, and not with the harsh and wicked facets glossed over, ignored, deliberately put aside, but truly seen. Otherwise, what point is there in resisting this place, in trying to remain myself? I do not believe that I will be able to hold out as long as Raditsu did. I am not certain that there is any reason that I should even try.

"I understood him perfectly well," I said. "The main point of interest was that I only avoided being placed with these _incorrigibles _because being murdered entitles the victim to special considerations."

I gave him no time to mull over that - instead, I switched tracks. "Where is my family?"

"Your family," he repeated, slowly. "Well. They are… elsewhere."

We were together for quite a long time, Frost and I. He might have gotten any number of things by me in the past, but I _can _tell when he is hedging. "Elsewhere?" I repeated, flatly. And waited. He was nervous now; this was not a conversation that he wanted to be having. When he didn't answer, I said, "You mean among the _incorrigibles_, do you not?"

He hesitated, perhaps looking for the right way to couch the thing, before simply saying, "Yes."

"Where is that? It is a place to which we can go?"

"My lady, I do not -"

"It seems to me that this is a bad place for half-truths or secrets, and a worse one for lies. Is that not true?"

That seemed to startle him - despite everything, how little he seems to think of me - but he nodded, firmly. "This is true. This place seems expressly designed to strip away everything that is untrue."

"You've been there already."

"Yes," he said, unwillingly. "I have."

"What did you find?" I asked him.

"Nothing whatsoever that was new," he said.

"I don't understand what you mean."

He sighed out his frustration, and I felt myself becoming angry with him. I recognized the feeling for what it was - misdirected and pointless - and tried to suppress it. Going there - going wherever he had gone to find them - could not have been easy for him. In life, he'd rarely been in the presence of my family, and the few times that they had met had been a horrific strain for the both of us. There'd been no rational reason to think that they'd have cause to hard him - not if we kept to our roles - but one could not always depend upon reason from Furiza. And, too, there was another problem; there was in Frost a seed of defiance, roiling outrage, always carefully hidden, masked by perfect manners and smooth diffidence, but close enough to the surface for me to occasionally glimpse it. It terrified me, seeing that so near to escaping.

I had wondered earlier, if it were possible that Frost might have found a way to bring about the downfall of my family, had the Super Saiyajin not appeared when he had. Now I wondered if he mightn't have simply self-destructed instead, gone in for some doomed confrontation in lieu of further silence. I should like to think that he would never have been so foolish, and I've well learned that people can do remarkably stupid things when faced with naught but bad choices.

"Nothing's changed for them," he said, finally. "For all the time that's passed, they haven't changed at all. They're just the same people that they were when they were alive - rehashing the very same old slights and arguments and glories. They're just the same, and that's all that they ever will be."

"When I was certain that I was going to die soon, I had wanted…" I said, but then I could no longer remember just what it was that I _had _wanted. It seemed so long ago that I had stood face to face with the Super Saiyajin for the first time, so certain that I was looking at a monster, so sure that he would kill me. As frightened as I'd been, there'd been a sense of pride, too, the feeling that I was doing something brave.

Yes, that was what I'd wanted to say to Furiza - to all of them, but him especially; that I'd faced the Super Saiyajin, and turned his power to my will, and that I hadn't been afraid. The last would have been a blatant lie, but it would nonetheless have been very good to say.

"Understand," he said, pleading now, debasing himself in a way that I did not like to see, "that there's nothing there for you. Whatever you had to say - they won't hear it. It won't make any difference."

"I see," I said. Honestly, it was something of a relief, hearing that. I'd big words planned, but had I really seen them, I think perhaps I would have lost my nerve completely, and at this late date I might never have recovered it.

There seemed nothing more to say about that. Into the growing silence, I told him, "I saw the Super Saiyajin."

"I'd gathered that," he said. "From what you said to those Saiyajin, I thought that you must have." And, left unspoken, was the question; _Why_?

"I'd thought he'd kill me," I told him, "and that seemed preferable to the alternative. In retrospect, I believe that I was correct about the last, at least," I added, but nether of us so much smiled at that; there was very little to laugh about, in that. How can anyone chose to be reborn, knowing how bad death was? I wondered how Raditsu had died, if it had hurt very much. He'd said that Son Goku had done that, but that didn't match up with what I had seen of the Super Saiyajin - was he lying, or had he provoked the emergence of some facet of his personality that I had only glimpsed? "We were wrong about him," I said. "The Super Saiyajin is nothing like we'd imagined."

"Tell me," he said. The fascination that lit up his eyes at the mere hope of learning more about the Super Saiyajin made me wonder how long he could possibly be expected to stay here with me. I won't be enough to keep him here, I know that, not when he has the chance to go back into the universe and to see again all the things that had always so interested him. It would only be a matter of time.

So instead, I said, "I think maybe you ought to go back to wherever it is you're meant to be," I said. I didn't ask him where that was - some Heaven or a kinder Hell - because there was too much sting in knowing. "It's not right that you're allowing yourself be dragged down like this."

"I'm very well here," he said easily, trying to pretend that it was a small, inconsequential thing for him to be here, with me, when he might have been somewhere better, or even on his way to a new life. As though to prove it, he settled down in the sand across from me, acting for all the world as though it were comfortable, as though the rough gravel didn't sting and bite at the skin. He waited until he could see that I was watching him, before saying again, "I am well here, and I want to hear more about the Super Saiyajin. Will you tell me what you found out?"

And so I did.


	29. Chapter Twenty Nine: Aiken

"_If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around." _- Will Rogers

**Aiken **

"I ain't even going to talk to you," I said to Juunanagou, when he landed on one of the snowy cliffs up above me.

It was cold, up here where the radar machine that Son Goku's people had given me had told me to go. The mountains were craggy, sharp-stoned and icy, and the hard winds blew the snow in whirling white gusts. The dragon ball was here somewhere, under one of these drift snow dunes or hid among the piled stones, and all I had to do was just find it. It was the last of the bunch, that ball was. I was almost done, so I sure as hell didn't need him bugging me now.

"Why the hell not?" he demanded. When he stomped his foot a small avalanche of snow fell down from the cliff he was on, but I didn't give it or him more than a short glance. I was busy, clawing at the ice and cold stone where the radar machine told me to, overturning each rock carefully before putting it out of the way.

"Son Goku said: 'Don't start no more trouble.' And you aren't nothing but trouble, so I ain't even going to talk to you."

"Well, that makes you some special sort of ungrateful bitch, doesn't it? None of you droolers would have even put two an' two together, if _I _hadn't clued _you_ in."

I paused, thinking that over hard, because it sounded like something that ought to be true, but I knew that it wasn't all true. Then I remembered why I was mad at him all over again, and got just as mad as I had been when I'd first worked it out. Mad enough to kill him dead, no doubt about it, or at least to want to try. "I guess that you didn't tell me about Uragiru to help out anyone - not my Mistress or me or anybody - but just because you were trying to start some trouble -"

"Now you're just being slanderous."

"_And_," I pressed on, because I wasn't going to let him use big words to throw me off this track, "I guess that you must have known everything you told me for a long time before you told it to me - I think you knew it even when my Mistress was still alive - but you didn't say nothing to no one, so I guess that I don't have a thing to thank you for."

"Sure am glad that you aren't talking to me," he said.

I snorted and went back to digging for the ball. I lifted up another rock that was the size of my head, and then a few more that were as big as my fists, and then there it was, nestled in among the smaller stones and the hard-packed snow. Round and shiny and glowing with its own soft light.

"_Ball_," I breathed, all full of awe just looking at it, the thing that was going to get my Mistress back for me. I went to take it, but suddenly Juunanagou's arm reached under my own, grabbing up the dragon ball before I could.

He stepped back as he straightened, holding the ball up, turning it in his hand, studying it thoughtfully. "I've never handled one of these before," he said. "It isn't as heavy as I'd have thought it'd be."

"You give that back," I growled at him, lowly. "You just give that ball back!"

"Do you think I could break it, if I tried?" He asked me speculatively. "I wonder if anything _interesting_ would happen if I did…

"Oh, stop freaking out," he said, when he looked up from the ball. He made an annoyed frown at me. "Here - catch."

I snatched the ball out of the air when he threw it. Then I bought it down against my belly, where Uragiru's attack had left a gapping hole in the shell of my armor, and pressed both my hands over the ball to keep him from stealing it away again.

"So you're planning on wishing Frigid back, right?"

It was such a stupid question, that I figured that he'd only asked to make fun of me in some subtle way that I wasn't catching, but I answered, "And Frost, too. The Saiyajin said that I could have them both back, so him too."

"Who?" he said, but when I tried to tell him he waved the question away. "Never mind. What I wanted to ask was; 'Why?' Why even bother wishing her back?

"Here's what I'd do, if I were you," he went on. "I'd get myself something real nice. The Dragon can give immortality, you know."

"Don't you understand anything?" I said. "You're so stupid. You are really dumb."

"No, I think you've got that backwards," he told me. "I'm not the one who's acting like a goddamned toady."

I snorted at him again. "I am going to go get my Mistress back," I told him, and turning to head back to Son Goku's home, I left him behind.


	30. Chapter Thirty: Juunanagou

_Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. - Elbert Hubbard _

_When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said: "We're afraid they'll kill us." When men were asked the same question about women, they said: "We're afraid that they'll laugh at us." - Naomi Wolf _

**Juunanagou **

On Western Capital's side of the world, it was already dark out.

It wasn't hard to find the place; Yamcha's pretty good about keeping his ki banked down (and these days, his ain't what it used to be, either) but Uragiru didn't know any better. In a city full of humans, pets, and a couple thousand Animals, her ki stands out like a neon sign.

The apartment building wasn't nearly as posh as I'd expected it to be, considering the number of sports product endorsements I've seen Yamcha pimping out on the TV over the years. Still, it was pretty swanky - big step up in the world, considering that the guy had started his career as a petty bandit. The place was surrounded by a high brick wall, and I walked past the wrought iron gate casually, casing the place. A brief glance through the bars showed me a stone walkway lined with tall, manicured shrubs, leading up to the building.

There was a doorman on the other side of the glass doors, a tubby old Dog with gray around his blunt muzzle, dressed in a wrinkled uniform. I debated the merits of doing something about him, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Instead, I followed the brick wall down an ally, around to the back of the building, then I hopped the fence and kept going up.

Aiken thinks I'm just out to make trouble, but I ain't even gotten started yet. She don't even know what trouble looks like.

I tracked Uragiru and Yamcha's ki until I found the right place, seventeen floors up and near the rear corner of the building. I lighted on the ledge outside of the apartment, and looked into the dim bedroom through the cracks between the blinds. Yamcha was there, snoring on his belly in a bed big enough for three, sprawled out with each limb pointing in a different direction. The other side of the bed was empty, but I could tell that it had been slept in, because the covers there had been folded back neatly.

I slipped over to the next window, and there Uragiru was. Back facing me, she stood in front of the bathroom sink, dressed in nothing much more than one of Yamcha's faded jerseys, the frayed hem trailing off midway down her hips. She hair was down, fanned out across her back.

She had the door to the medicine cabinet open, and she was touching the bottles in there lightly, turning them to read the labels. Looking for something, or maybe just snooping. When she reached up for the higher shelves the hem of the jersey rose, too.

All these aliens, when you think about it, they've got to be pretty old, but they must not age like humans do, because none of them look it. She sure don't.

Uragiru closed the door to the medicine cabinet, and that's when she saw me, reflected in its mirrored door. She didn't startle, didn't even look surprised - it was like she'd expected me - but her hand tightened over the edge of the sink hard enough that little fissures began to run through the porcelain, so I knew that I'd made some sort of impression.

Looking at me in the mirror, her eyes narrowed, then darted toward the bedroom. I could see her debating the merits of waking Yamcha, of bringing him into it, and I could see how she dismissed the idea almost at once. Whatever this thing they have going is, obviously she held no illusions about his ability to protect her.

I pointed down toward the ground.

She rolled her eyes and turned toward me, throwing her hands in the air to show just how annoyed she was trying to pretend to be.

"Now," I mouthed at the window, and tapped the front of my wrist like there was a watch there.

What she mouthed back at me wasn't even polite.

I went back down to wait on the opposite side of the wall, leaning back against the rough brick while I watched the city folk pass by. A couple minutes later, I felt her ki start to move toward ground-level, then toward the front of the building.

I turned my head to glance through the gate, and saw that she'd paused in the doorway to speak with the doorman, who was frowning down at her, his furry brows furrowed. The old Dog said something that I couldn't quite make out, his tone plodding and gruffly concerned.

He seemed worried about her, but she shook her head in a carelessly, unconcerned sort of way that I knew for a fact was just a put on. "It's alright," she told him, pitching her voice so I'd hear. "I can look after myself, so don't worry."

When Uragiru stepped through the gate, she paused to close it behind her carefully before sparing me so much as a glance. "Hey," I said.

It's astonishing, how quickly she can become someone else. She looks so different now, from how she had when she didn't know she was being watched, so much more guarded. She'd put her hair back up, prim and neatly out of the way, pulled back so tightly that it had drawn her forehead taunt as well. She'd put the armor back on as well. The ridge of armor that ran over her collar bone was still faintly stained with blood, and that small lack of attention to detail made me think that she hadn't intended to wear it again.

The armor is a front, I'm sure of it. It's a costume, a prop to help her play the rule she wants to play, and truth be told she plays it well; it's like a completely different person from the one I saw in the window has come out here to face me, rigid and precise and coldly disinterested, and when she crossed her arms over her chest I almost didn't notice how badly her hands were shaking.

"What is it?" she demanded. A couple of passer-bys turned their heads at her voice, but then they kept walking. City like this one, you see all kinds; blue skin is barely worth a second look.

"Wow," I said. "Hey. What crawled up your ass and died?" When she didn't say anything else, just stared at me impatiently, I said, "You'd better just show me some respect, or I won't tell you anything."

"There's nothing that you have to say that I want or need to hear."

"No, you'll want to know this," I told her, then I waited again, wanting to at least make her work for it, but she wasn't playing. She's no fun, really - she's worse than my sister. "Well, I'll tell you - they're wishing her back. Any time now - Aiken just found the last dragon ball, not fifteen minutes ago."

She didn't so much as blink. "Of course," she said. "You think I needed you to tell me that?"

"Someone else, too. Frost, Aiken said."

That did seem to hit her, but I couldn't tell exactly how before she'd hidden it away again behind a careful mask of indifference. "Of course," she said again.

"Well, shit… Aren't you going to _do anything _about it?"

"What do you think I could do, at this point?"

"Lucky thing you asked me, because I have this all figured out already. What you do is, wait until they call the dragon - there's a password, and I don't know it, so you'll have to wait until after he's been called - and then you jump out and get the first wish for yourself before they can say anything. Get immortality, first thing, and then you'll have to hurry up and make a second wish before they can -"

"Are you lonely?" she said.

She cocked her head at me, waiting for an answer. I faltered, thrown off by the question. "Wait… what?"

"Yamcha told me that you and your sister are no longer capable of aging. What do you imagine life will be like for you, when everyone you know and love is long dead, and you're still alive?"

The sidewalk under my feet suddenly became very interesting - I starred at it hard. "I don't worry about that," I said. "I'm the ultimate fighter, so I don't have to think about anything like that."

"Please."

"No, it's just a plain fact. These Saiyajin - Son and all of them? They're just a passing fad. I can't wait until they're all dead, because then I'll be able to do whatever I want, and there'll be no one to get in my way."

"It's one thing to tell lies to other people," she told me, voice small and sharp as a scalpel, "But if you aren't truthful with yourself, you'll make errors."

"I'd kill them myself, if I could," I said. "Son, especially."

She sighed at me, glanced back at the apartment building impatiently, and now I got the impression that she wasn't just playacting anymore; she really was bored with me, and deeply annoyed, too. "I'm good as dead, because of you. It's only a matter of time before they find me, after Aiken makes her wishes. There are things that I'd rather be doing."

Something in my gut turned over uncomfortably. "Son and his people aren't going to let anything like that happen. Maybe you didn't notice this, but they don't hold with killing, not even folks that deserve it."

"This entire planet is catastrophically sheltered," she told me, "but I'm beginning to believe that you're the most naïve of the lot."

I frowned at her, feeling my fists ball at my sides, and said, "I've taken just about as many insults from you as I'm going to," but then it hit me. "I see what you're doing," I said, and smirked at her. "You're trying to pull the same trick on me that Frigid tried to pull on Son. Well, sorry, but I'm not that stupid; If your ass does get killed, I ain't taking the heat for it."

She shrugged, and glanced back at the building again. "It doesn't really make that much of a difference," she said, but she'd put the mask on again, and that got to me more than I wanted to admit.

"You should get Yamcha to explain to you about ki," I told her. "Then nobody will be able to sneak up on you, anyway."

"It doesn't make any difference," she said, again. "Frigid always gets her way."


	31. Chapter Thirty One: Aiken

_The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. _- Aristotle

**Aiken**

The sky went dark when the Dragon came out. It seemed to shrink, the blackness settling in around us tightly while the Dragon grew and grew, grew until his coiled form was as big as the sky itself. All around us, lightening flashed, forking tongues of flame, whiter than white and blinding. The flickering lights and shadows played across my Mistress's body, lying there on the flat stone where I'd placed her, in-between the dragon balls and myself.

"You who have gathered the seven dragon balls," the Dragon spoke, and I felt the low roar of his voice echoing through my chest and deep in my bones, "I will grant any two wishes within my power.

"What is your first wish?" he demanded.

Son Gohan had helped me work out just what I needed to say to that Dragon, but looking up at him now, towering over me, eyes glowing, I felt my mouth go dry and my tongue turn stupid.

"I want…" I said, and then I couldn't remember what it was that I was meant to say. If I screwed this up, there wouldn't be another chance - I knew that - and the thought crawled up inside my head and started chewing.

"Yes… what is it that you want?" the dragon prompted, his growling voice growing still lower with impatience. The dirt under my feet quaked at the rumble of his voice. The Dragon let out a deep sigh, and all along the rocky plain little pebbles began to dance along the shaking ground. Laid out on the flat stone, my Mistress's hand slipped over the edge of the rock, and dangled

Helplessly,

Helplessly, I looked back at the Saiyajin's people where they flanked me, and Son Gohan stepped forward. "She wants you to restore the space ship that my Dad accidentally blew up last week, the one that belonged to Frigid." He pointed to patch of scorched earth where the ship had stood. "The ship, and everything that was in it, including the body of the Icejin man named Frost."

"That's right," I agreed quickly. "Do that first."

I watched as the Dragon's eyes glowed brighter, and when I looked back down at the ground the ship was there, right where it had been before Son Goku had blown it up.

"It is done," the Dragon said, and the pebbles at my feet rattled. "What is your final wish?"

"Take everyone who lived in that ship, and who died," I said, "and make them be alive again."

"It is done," the Dragon said, and his eyes lit up again.

And on the flat stone, my Mistress sat up.


	32. Chapter Thirty Two: Frigid

**Author's Note: Some small changes are going to be made to Chapter 31 in the near future. It's nothing so important that someone who's already read the chapter would need to go back and read it again. The only notable alteration is that I've changed things to where Aiken does not wish back the ship. **

_We are dismayed when we find that even disaster cannot cure us of our faults. _- Luc De Clapiers

**Frigid **

Later, when I attempted to remember what it had felt like to be wrenched back into life, I found that I could not recall. There seemed to have been no intermediate state; I had been dead, and now I was alive. I believe that I understood at least that much, even before I opened my eyes and saw Aiken's face leaning over me, but I could not have explained how I had known. It seemed entirely self-evident.

I was on my back atop a sun-warmed stone, my tail bent at an uncomfortable angle beneath me. Aiken's face was above my own, so close that I could trace the course of every threading scar beneath her fur. She's never been given to smiling, my Aiken, but now she was grinning widely enough to show every tooth she had. Above us, the serpentine coils of something unimaginably huge filled the blackened sky. Before I could do more than glace the creature - glowing red eyes beneath a long muzzle, inscrutable and incalculably ancient - it disappeared with a blinding of light. My hands came up to shield my eyes.

When I looked again, the sky was blue and flecked with white wisps of cloud. There was no sign of the black stormy clouds that had been there only moments before, nor of the leviathan.

I turned my head, and saw Frost sit up on the ground below me. His movements as he stood were cautious with uncertainty but in no way pained; he looked as well as he had in Hell. A short distance beyond us, Son Goku and his sons were watching us, and Frost's attention was fixed on them.

Much of what I hadn't understood up until that point became clear to me then. What the creature in the sky had been. What had happened. Who was responsible for it.

"Aiken…" I said, and was surprised by how calm my voice sounded. How unafraid. I should try to remember that her intentions were good, I told myself. They were only good. But fear was creeping up on me, chilling. I know that I can get so mean when I'm frightened, and I don't think I've ever been so scared before, or had such good reason to fear. I see the Enma creature again, deciding the rest of my forever on his own discretion. I've no mitigating factors now, no technicalities to fall back on. When I die again, what will -

I realized suddenly that Aiken was watching me closely. Sobering quickly, she took a step back. She looked as though she wished to say something, but words seemed to fail her. They often do. Watching her as she searched my face, I thought, She knows that something is wrong. She doesn't understand it, but she knows.

I dropped my eyes away from hers then, and moved to sit.

An instant later, Aiken's big gripped me around the waist. She snatched me up from the rock and clutched me against her chest. Her arms crossed around my back, she squeezed hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. I've long suspected that she doesn't realize her own strength, how close a match we are. My face is pressed against the junction of her shoulder and throat, buried in the fur there. My feet dangle half a meter above the ground. I do not know what to do; this is unprecedented.

"Aiken!" I heard Frost bark. There's shock in his voice, and not a small bit of fear. One does not have to think long to discover what has him worried; I am not trusted. After all, I am not trustworthy. It's all written in indelible ink in that gigantic, red-faced god's ledger; the record stands for itself.

When she heard Frost's voice, Aiken awoke from whatever madness had gripped her. She set me down, carefully but very quickly, and took three steps back away from me. She was deeply ashamed of her actions, and it showed in every centimeter of her body; in the way her head and shoulders hung limp, the droop of her tail, the angle at which she held her ears.

"Aiken -" I began, and saw her master the desire to cringe.

From the Saiyajin's group, I heard one voice say "Heh." Another said, "Aw."

I whirled on them sharply, my tail lashing and my fists balled by my sides to hide their shaking. I could not tell which of the three had spoken, because they were all smiling - the same absurd, indulgent smile on every face. We know that you're about, those smiles said. You're harmless after all, and nothing to be taken seriously.

There is no capacity solemnity in any of the Saiyajin's people. They cheapen everything. They've no conception of how badly I wish to destroy them.

I stared at them until they began to seem discomforted, until Son Goku's arm came up to rub at the back of his neck, and until Son Gohan lowered his eyes to the ground. Then I looked back to Aiken.

"You won't do anything like that again," I said.

"I won't," she said, empathically. "I never will. I know I never should have -"

"And so," I said, raising my voice to address the entire crowd. Aiken fell silent at once. "What now?"


	33. Chapter Thirty Three: Aiken

_Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do... The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as "good," since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. _- Chuck Klosterman

**Aiken **

Something's gone wrong, and even I can tell that much. Something's really, real wrong, and I'm badly worried about my Mistress right now.

She's scared of a whole lot of things, my Mistress is. Even things that she doesn't rightly have any reason to be scared of, and that she _knows _she doesn't have good reason to fear. Uragiru said that was a family trait, but Uragiru was always lying all the time. I don't know anything about any of that.

I don't know anything, I guess. Things should be good now, shouldn't they? Everything's better now - my Mistress is back alive again and so's Frost, too, and there's just a couple of loose strings that need to be tied up before we can get going on home. We don't have a ship yet, and Uragiru still needs putting down, but otherwise - everything should be just as good as it gets.

It isn't, though. Maybe my Mistress scares easy, but never like this. Not ever anything like this. Something's got her a whole lot more scared than the thought of dying or being dead ever made her. Even back before we knew what he really was, the Super Saiyajin never scared her this much.

And the hell of the thing is, I can't tell if any of the others have noticed. I don't know if Frost has even caught onto it. He's so busy with the Saiyajin, it's almost like he's forgotten that my Mistress is here at all. That could be on purpose, but I can't tell; Maybe he's working so hard to keep Son Goku and his boys attentions focused on him so they don't try and bother my Mistress, but maybe he's just more interested in what they have to say than he is in my Mistress.

I've never been able to work out what sort of game he's playing, but he got those Saiyajin to warm up to him so easily, you'd have thought he'd been bred for the job. He couldn't ever have even seen Son Gohan before, but somehow Frost knew that he was the only one of the lot that put some value in trying to do things proper. He used it to get the upper-hand against the Saiyajin, returning his stiff bow with one that was so long and deep as to embarrass Gohan. As for the other two, it didn't take more than two minutes for Frost to get a laugh out of and a grin from the other. And then that was it; they were ready to like him, even if they didn't trust him yet.

These Saiyajin from Earth are a very particular sort of people, but when Frost gets going he can be at least as odd as they are.

Before very long we were on our way back the Saiyajin's place. Frost walked in front with the Saiyajin, conducting an animated discussion on nothing I cared enough about to pay attention to. My Mistress hung back, in no way eager to follow after them, and I stayed back further behind my Mistress, careful not to crowd her. I made a stupid mistake back there, right when she first woke up, and it was something I never should have done. And there'd have been a time - even as recently as a week ago, maybe - when she would never have forgiven an error like that. But now it seems like she's forgotten about it already; there are bigger things on her mind, I guess, and none of them good.

When we got there, the Saiyajin's house wasn't the zoo that it had been on the day we first came here. Someone must have fetched the kids home, because none of the little mongrels were anywhere to be seen. But there were still a couple of guests, and they came to the door with Chichi when the Saiyajin called out his return; a blue-haired old lady, and taller man with feathered purple hair that was parted down the center. The woman had a tough-looking face, even if she was old, and when she stepped through the doorway to meet us she moved with the air of someone who knew what she wanted and was used to getting it.

The man was a completely different story. From the second I first saw him, I knew that I didn't like him. He had that sort of pinched and uncertain look some people get, when they have no idea who they are or what they want to be. He moved awkwardly, as though he were embarrassed about something, and his gaze shifted along the ground while his fingers fiddled with the buttons on his suit. Also, he had stupid hair.

My Mistress didn't seem to like him, either. When he appeared in the doorway she faltered to a sudden stop, then stepped forward quickly and caught Frost by the wrist. When he turned his head back to look at her, she whispered sharply, "Is that the one?" She indicated him with a slight jerk of her head; my Mistress never pointed at anyone unless she intended to follow through on the threat. "Is that him?"

"It is not," Frost said, but even I could tell that he wasn't saying everything he knew.

"You are certain?"

Frost was watching her now - finally - seeing her and seeing that there was something more than wrong going on. He'd never think to compromise her by asking what the trouble was - not with all these others around - but he'd seen now at least. "I am," he said, but I don't think she believed him.

She caught my eye and said, "Aiken," and I stepped forward to put myself between the purple-haired man and both Frost and my Mistress.

I kept a close eye on that man as he stood in the doorway, looking almost shy, but it was the old woman that approached us. She stepped up to my Mistress like they were old acquaintances, and I tensed to cut her off as she came closer, but my Mistress said, "Aiken," softly, so I stayed back even as my Mistress stepped forward to meet her.

"So," the woman said, "Back among the living."

"That seems to be the case," my Mistress agreed.

The old woman stood looking from my Mistress to Frost, as though she were expecting something. She wants an introduction, I realized suddenly, but just as I thought it, the woman stepped over to Frost on her own initiative. "Bulma Briefs," she said, and thrust her hand out at Frost. From the other side of the woman's outstretched arm, I saw embarrassment flicker across my Mistress's face as she realized that she'd missed her cue. I wish that the Saiyajin's people would be more careful; my Mistress is not used to being shamed by people like them.

Frost bent to take the offered hand carefully; it disappeared completely inside his palm. The woman's other hand came up to touch his wrist while they shook hands, fingertips probing lightly, studying. "Frost," he said. "I'm very pleased to meet you."

The woman stepped back. She clapped her hands together once, a sharp and eager sound, and looking from Frost to my Mistress and back, she said, "Well, we've got business to discuss."

"Is that so?" my Mistress said.

"Oh yeah," Bulma said. "We've got to work on this ship thing, right?" She didn't wait for an answer, just turned her back on my Mistress and started into the house. That was when I became sure that she had to be some sort of important person here, a queen or maybe an empress. Nothing next to my Mistress, of course, but high enough that she humored her when Bulma looked back and said, with impatience in her voice, "Let's go inside, okay?" So we followed her through the door, Frost ducking and twisting his head carefully to fit his horns through the doorway.

"We were talking through this stuff earlier," Bulma said, while we followed her down the hall. "Son and I and the boys." It wasn't even her house, but when we got to the kitchen she sat down at the head of the table. My Mistress paused, waiting to see what the Super Saiyajin would do, but when Son Goku put himself at Bulma's right hand, my Mistress sat down at the other end of the table, facing Bulma. Goten sat down next to his father, but Gohan stayed standing behind them, his hands clutched behind his back. The purple-haired man sat down next to Bulma, and looking at them side-to-side like that, I started to wonder if they shared blood. Frost sat at my Mistress's right, and I at her left.

"We talked this over earlier," Gohan repeated, picking up where Bulma had left off. "What would be the best way to get you all back to… wherever it is you came from."

"The way I figure it," Bulma said, "I can get you in a ship that'll get you as far as you need to go within the next couple of weeks." She paused, like she wanted to give that time to sink in. Her next words were directed pointedly at Frost. "But I'd like some help in return. Most of the space ships I've been able to fiddle around with before were old as hell. I learned a lot, but the technology must have improved immensely since then." He was shaking his head sadly, but she pressed one. "Any insights you have into newer advances -"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I've very little knowledge of such things."

"You ought to ask Uragiru; she'll know better than any of us," my Mistress suggested. And then she said, "You know where she is, don't you?"

Son Goku's face got that clouded look at made him look very young and very dangerous at the same time. "You give that up right now," he said.

And Gohan said, "Uragiru is not a topic that's opened for discussion."

"Two weeks," my Mistress repeated, as though the others had not spoken. She turned her head to the side, drumming her fingertips across the table's surface as she thought it though. Then she looked at Frost and said something to him, very quickly, in a tongue that only Icejin ever used among themselves.

Whatever it was she'd said to him, Frost showed no reaction. "Of course," he said, speaking as though he were talking to no one in particular, "it would be best if we could get our own ship back. I'm afraid that there was a great deal of important data stored on that ship, that I won't have any way of replacing otherwise."

"Data?" Bulma repeated, and I saw that Gohan was watching him closely now, too. "What kind of data?"

He sighed, then cast his eyes upwards, as though he was thinking. "All kinds," he said at last. "Astronomical. Geological. Biological. Sociological. From scores of worlds, some of which no longer exist."

I think he's telling them a lie - all that stuff he's talking about wasn't on the ship that Son Goku blew up, at least not most of it. He and Uragiru were always unloading specimens and samples and all sorts of junk whenever we were in port at one of the more important worlds. And there's no way either of them would have been dumb enough not to backup their data files. So I'm pretty sure that he's lying, but he's telling them that story to get something out of them that my Mistress wants, so I kept quiet.

"Our dragon balls won't be active again for another year…" Bulma said.

"I was so relieved," Frost said, "when my Lady told me that you had been good enough to inform her that the Namekjin were alive and well. I am certain that if I were able to speak to Muuri or any of the other elders, they would be willing to allow me a wish. They promised me as much long ago, though I never collected on it.

"Of course, once we had the ship back, you'd be given free access to whatever you wished to see. Knowledge is meant to be shared, isn't that so? In any case, it's the least that one could do. We already owe you quite a debt of gratitude."

"Certainly," my Mistress agreed, her hand slipping below the table as it curled up into a fist. "Certainly, that's true."

"Of course, you can go there directly, can you not?" Frost said to Son Goku. "Everyone in the Underworld seemed to agree on that, that the Super Saiyajin could move himself between worlds, between even life and death, with only a thought."

"I can't come here when I'm dead. I ain't supposed to, anyway."

"That's a Yardratjin talent, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"They're quite a bit different from us, aren't they, the Yardratjin?" Son Goku shrugged. "But still, they can be very useful."

"They got really good food there."

"Do they? Well, but the same can't be said of the Namekjin, can it?" He leaned over the table, bringing his face closer to Son Goku's. "But you _can_ go there, can't you, to the new Nameksei?"

"Watch it, Dad," Goten said. "I think maybe he's being sneaky about something." He frowned suspiciously at Frost, and I had to fight back the desire to flash my teeth at that one, because I knew _exactly_ what was in his head. Everyone always said Saiyajin tended to have inappropriate tastes.

"I'll go ask them about it," Son Goku said. He put two fingers to his forehead, and then he just up and disappeared.

I stood quickly, knocking my chair back against the wall, turning my head every quick way to see where he'd gone, but he wasn't anywhere. I bent to look under the table; I didn't really think he was there, but I couldn't think of where else he _could_ be. He wasn't there, and I straightened, demanding of the other Saiyajin, "Where'd he go? Where is he?"

"Aiken," my Mistress said tiredly, "Sit back down."

I did, bending over quickly first to sit my chair back up. Frost told me, "He went to Nameksei."

"Huh," I said. I tugged at the edge of my ear, thinking that through. "Well, if he can just up and go like that, why don't we just have take us home?"

"He can only travel to the location of people he's already met," Gohan explained. "So there's probably no one who could help us out with a ship."

"No one he'd like to introduce me to, in any case," my Mistress cut in.

Gohan had been pacing slowly behind his father's empty chair, but he came to a halt when she said that, then turned back around to look at my Mistress. "Right," he said, with academic flatness.

And after that, the silence just dragged on and on. After a couple of minutes, the purple-haired man shifted in his seat and cleared his throat quietly against the palm of his hand. My Mistress turned on him like she'd just been waiting for him to give her an excuse. "And you've nothing to say?" she demanded.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"What a farce this all is," she spat out. She got to her feet in one quick, flowing movement. "You can think of absolutely nothing whatsoever to tell me?"

"Hey now," Gohan said. "Don't let yourself get upset."

"I am not _upset_," she bit back at him. "I am perfectly fine. We will simply continue to behave as though nothing happened. I have no interest in discussing the matter, in any case."

"You're confused," Bulma said, and she got up to her feet, too. I started to stand myself, but under the table Frost's foot shot out and gripped me around the ankle. He gave his head an almost unperceivable shake, and I took his word for it and stayed out of the way. "You're confused, and you don't know what you're talking about. If you _want_ to know what happened, we'll tell you. But you need to calm -"

"I don't have any interest in it. It does not matter to me in the slightest."

"Yeah, whatever," Bulma said. "There's something wrong with you, you know that?"

My Mistress glared across the table at her, but the Bulma lady just back. Stupid woman's playing with fire, but no one seemed willing to tell her that, or to get involved between the two of them. The Son men and the one with the purple hair seemed embarrassed - almost frighten - and they looked down and away, looked anywhere to avoid getting caught up in Bulma's glare. Meanwhile, Frost was doing his very best to look unobtrusive, which was a real talent when you're as big as he is.

Shockingly, it was my Mistress who broke first, dropping her eyes at the same time she dropped back into her chair. "You're right," she said. "My apologies… I'm afraid that I am not fit company at the moment."

Bulma snorted at that. "Yeah, well, maybe you should go lay down or something, then."

"I believe that would be for the best," my Mistress agreed.

"You guys can stay in the house out back," she said. "It's unlocked."

I couldn't keep myself from interrupting. "That house - it's clean now, isn't it?"

"_Aiken,_" my Mistress said, outraged. "Is it your desire to shame me, insulting our hosts like that?"

She is so close to flying apart completely, and I've only made it worse now. "No," I said, quickly, I never meant to, and - and I'm sorry," I told the Saiyajin's people. They were all watching me now - they didn't seem mad, but they were watching me, and my tongue started to get tied up. "But the other night - with Uragiru. There was a lot of blood, and - and other things. I guess there was a lot of blood there. So that's why I said if it had been cleaned up -"

"It's fine," Gohan said. "That's been taken care of - don't worry about it."

"You'll excuse me now," my Mistress said, standing again. "Please."

"Aiken," she said, when I rose to follow her. "You should stay here with Frost for the time being." I could still the strain there still, barely hidden; something's wrong, and it's my fault, and she doesn't want me to see it. "I'll be perfectly fine," she said, before she turned her back on me and walked out.

I sunk back down into my chair. When Son Goku blinked back into the kitchen, I could barely work up any surprise. "They said you can use their dragon balls," Son Goku told Frost. "But the problem is, they just used them a little while ago, so they ain't going to be any good for another few months."

"Months?" I said. "Frost - she won't want to wait -" I felt his foot tighten around my ankle again; not hard enough to hurt - I don't guess he could hurt me if he even wanted to - but enough that I knew that I needed to shut up, and fast.

He gave a shrug that was at once resigned and easy. "Well, if that's the best we can hope for, then it will have to do."


	34. Chapter Thirty Four: Juunanagou

_Having to grapple with the real world is stressful, and people with relative power and privilege never know how to deal with stress very well. As such, they long for and applaud easy answers for the stress that occasionally manages to intrude upon their lives. - Tim Wise _

**Juunanagou**

These guys still haven't figured out how to keep their ki down, and that makes it entirely too easy to mess with them. The only one who's seemed to have realized that she has a problem is Uragiru, and I figured that's because Yamcha must have clued her in. Every once in a while over the last few days, while Aiken was busy looking for the dragon balls, I could feel Uragiru tamp her ki way down, though she never disappeared from my senses completely and she wasn't ever able to keep it suppressed for long. So she isn't completely stupid, anyway. She understands that they're going to be coming after her.

On the other hand, Frigid's only been alive again for a few hours, but her ki's been burning bright as it gets ever since. I don't think she understands how much she gives away by letting her energy show like that - every little peak of anger or fright or outrage, just out there for everyone to see. It's embarrassing, honestly.

I could tell from her ki that she was sleeping now – a heavy kind of sleep, like she hadn't had any rest at all while she was dead – all alone inside the little bungalow where Uragiru and Aiken had damn near killed each other. I wouldn't want to disturb anybody, so I just went ahead and let myself inside.

Someone's been cleaning – the bloody mess Yamcha had left in the hallway was entirely gone, and the walls and floorboards shined like they were brand new. There was an antiseptic smell in that narrow little hallway, like a hospital room – or a laboratory – and I wrinkled my nose and went on through to the TV room.

I found Frigid curled up like a little bird inside an egg in the arms of an over-sized easy chair, with her tail wrapped around her ankles, her arms folded over her draw-up knees, her head nestled in the space this made. It was weirdly cute, like a goddamn kitten in a basket. You could almost mistake her for a child, or some other innocent thing, when she's sleeping like that. I didn't doubt that she'd hate being seen like that, so vulnerable and unguarded.

I sat down on the couch across from the chair, leaned across the coffee table that was between us, and said, "Hey." When she didn't move, I said it again louder. "Hey. Wake up." Seems like she operates almost exclusively on embarrassment and outrage, and when her eyes opened she was nothing but both.

She mastered herself quickly, moving with poise to sit upright in the chair. She slid forward to the edge of the big chair's cushion, but her feet still dangled over the side, a clean six inches above the ground. "What is it that you want?" she demanded. She stared at me so cold, but I think she's close to the edge now. I think she's real close to forgetting the consequences.

"I want to talk at you."

The tip of her tail flicked against the edge of the chair's upholstered side, impatient. "I've no interest in speaking to you."

She said it like she expected that I'd care about what she was interested in doing or not doing, but I couldn't have told you where she got that idea from. "I want to talk to you about Hell."

"I take exception to the fact that you assume I have any knowledge of such a place. I will have you know that I am shocked and deeply insulted."

I looked at her hard. "Was that a joke?"

She shrugged, shoulders that were slim but no longer wasted rolling in a motion that was almost coy.

"Look," I said finally, when she didn't say anything else. "I figure you're in a tight spot right now, right? You're going to up and die again eventually, and then you'll find yourself right back in Hell where you began -"

She sniffed. "If only."

"The hell's that mean?"

"It means nothing."

"Yeah, whatever. The point is, you're going to die again, and then you're going to find yourself on the wrong side of Enma's desk all over again. What'd you think of that dude, by the way?"

Her eyes darted upward quickly, just the tiniest flick of movement, and she shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "I've no opinion."

"What, you think he's watching us? I doubt it, but if he is -" I raised both my my hands up above my head and flipped off the ceiling. "How do you like that, huh?" I called upward. "Asshole thinks he's a big fucking guy...

"Hmph," I said, and looked back to Frigid.

"Do you do this frequently?" she asked me.

"Do what?"

"Inflict your rantings upon others."

"That's how you treat someone who's trying to help you, huh?"

"Please," she said. "I'm sick near to death of being helped by you people. For all your_ help_ I'm worse off now than I was at the beginning."

Just when you'd think she couldn't get more ungrateful; she's alive again, and healthy, and got all that and room and board to boot for free. What more could she want? "You're a rip-roaring bitch, did you know that?"

"It's past time that someone noticed," she said. "As for Lord Enma, he has been placed in charge, and there's nothing that can be done about that. If there was a power that could defy him he would have been deposed long ago, of that I am certain. We will all simply have to accept his judgment, and that's all there is to it. That is reality of the situation -"

"Not me. I don't have to, cause I don't plan on dying again."

She looked deeply annoyed at that, but then she paused, seeming to think it over. "Yes, Son Goten did say that you and your sister do not age..."

"That little shit has a crush on you, you know."

"Please," she said, "don't be so revolting. You are only trying to shock me, and it is very boring. I wish that you would get to the point, if you even have one."

"My point is this – why should _you_ die again, when the dragon balls are still out there?" The tip of her tail stopped lashing, and I figured that meant I had her attention. "They'll be active again in a year. You could hang out here until then – make up any old excuse, Son's people won't ask too many questions. In the mean time – for the right price – I could _borrow _the dragon radar from Bulma's place.

Call the Dragon up, wish for immorality, and by the time anyone here notices it'll be too late for them to stop you. Problem solved."

"For a price?" she repeated. "You are the worst bargainer I've encountered since coming here, and the Saiyajin's people have gifted me with things that are beyond cost without even discussing repayment. You could simply ask the Dragon for anything whatsoever you wanted yourself, but I'm to believe that you're interested in brokering a fee? No, you are trying to trick me, I can see that plainly."

She leaned forward. "Do you want to know why I think you're here, troubling me? Should I tell you what it is that you want?"

"Lady, you don't know shit about what I want."

"How could I not? You are hideously transparent. You are miserable in your immorality, and so you would like other people to be as miserable as you are. But I've no interest in joining you in your misery."

"So then what? Dying once wasn't bad enough – you want to do it all over again?"

"Not especially," she said, "but the alternative does not appeal to me. In all honesty, I am at a loss as to how to face next week, let alone the rest of forever. It is true that I am uncertain as to how to proceed from here. However, I think that if I-"

I stood up quickly and reached across the table to grab her around the throat. I don't think she'd realized before then that I was anything more than an average human, and so she wasn't expecting anything like that from me. But before she'd even had time to flinch I'd hauled her up out of the chair and across the table. I lifted her up over my head, and when her feet found purchase on the edge of the table I kicked it over and out of the way.

She couldn't pretend to be so cold and indifferent to the prospect of death with my hand around her throat, and she bucked and kicked, her tail whipping around in wild circles. She's stronger than she was before now, yeah, but it's the difference between an ant and a flea. Still, it took a lot longer than I expected for her fingers to stop clawing at my wrist and drop, limply, to her sides.

I let her drop to the floor. Wheezing and hacking, she hauled herself up to her elbows and turned her face to look up at me with wide and frightened eyes. "You're feeling invincible right now because you aren't sick anymore, but this death thing? It isn't a thinking question."

I turned, and left her gasping on the floor.


	35. Chapter Thirty Five: Frigid

_Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them. -François de La Rochefoucauld_

**Frigid **

There were many mirrors in this house, because the woman Bulma was very vain, and narcissistic, and easily pleased by herself. There were mirrors everywhere, but I took myself into the bathroom adjoining the master bedchamber, and closed the door behind me, and the smaller space was something of a comfort. Still, Juunanagou could be out there. It was impossible to say.

I examined myself in the mirror, and found what I had already suspected I would find; he'd marked me, and the flesh of my throat was already darkening, a red-purple bruise blooming there. The

imprint of palm and fingers was distinct. Before I came here, fifty years must have passed without anyone so much as raising dust against my skin. Now this. I cannot judge where it will end.

There was a robe hanging from a hook near the shower, and I took it down quickly and pulled it on over myself. It was a poor fit, if I were any judge, as the excess length of cloth pooled on the ground around my feet and the sleeves engulfed my arms and hands completely. However, the voluminous thing suited my needs well enough, as when I pulled the collar up around my neck and tied the straps in place the bruising was concealed. My tail was uncomfortable, trapped under that trailing weight of cloth. I thought to tear a slit in the garment, but then thought better; I did not know the value of such a thing, and I'd no desire to find myself more deeply indebted to these people.

Heretofore, I've resisted such open concessions to acculturation, but it hardly seems worthy of consideration now. I've a shame to hide and so it must be hidden. In light of all that had happened it seemed unavoidable, that I must have little choice in becoming more and more like them.

I went out from the bathroom, uncertain of what I should do next. Should I seek the Super Saiyajin's intervention against Juunanagou? I do not understand what he wanted of me – I am not certain that even Juunanagou himself understood his own actions – but the ease with which he caught and held me was horrifying. He did not even seem to exert himself in the slightest, and I thought that with no more effort he might have killed me... that might have been the best thing for me, in the larger scheme of things, as then I would have been able to go before Lord Enma once again as a victim of murder, but when his hand was at my throat I could not think in such terms, I wanted only for him to let go so I could breathe again -

I turned from the hallway, and only avoided colliding with Aiken because she jumped back smartly to avoid me. "Aiken!" I said - sharply, because she'd surprised me badly. "What are you skulking around here for?"

"I felt like I should come down here..." she began, but under my gaze she began to trip and stumble over her own words. "Because maybe something was wrong but I wasn't sure... I mean, it's late and everyone gone home or to bed except for Frost and that Bulma, so I couldn't ask anybody who knew something about it – ask them if they felt it too... but I just felt like I should -"

"You heard something," I told her. "That is what you mean. A small sound that you didn't respond to at once, out of uncertainty and a desire to follow my original instructions."

She started to agree, perhaps out of reflex, but then paused. "No -" she almost said, but then stopped again, her face caught in a pained expression. "I don't want to tell you a lie," she said, in a final rush.

I've no time for this. "Come with me," I said, and stepping around her I continued down the hall and back to the living room. I sat again in the large chair, folding my legs up under myself beneath the folds of the robe. The neck began to come open when I sat, and I reached up quickly to pull it closed again.

The small table was still overturned where Juunanagou had kicked it, and I nodded toward it and Aiken bent and righted it, putting it between my chair and the couch. "Sit," I told her, motioning with one terry-cloth draped arm. She did so, balancing her weight uneasily on the edge of the couch across from me.

"Is it... Is it too cold in here?" she asked me uncertainty, her brow deeply furrowed, but I chose to ignore her.

"I am going to tell you something," I said to her, "and you must remember my instructions and follow them exactly. Do you you understand me?" She nodded gravely, and leaned over the table to watch me intently. "Someday, you are going to meet a horrid man named Lord Enma, and when you do you must not argue with him, no matter what he might do to provoke you. You must treat him with all the same respect that you would show me, because he is temperamental and spiteful and I do not wish for you to anger him. He will ask you to account for yourself, and when he does you must day, 'I am very sorry for every wrong thing that I ever did, and I beg your forgiveness.'"

On a whim, I reached across the table and took up her hand between my own. It was large enough that my own hand might have disappeared easily inside her fist. I ran my thumb over the wide, calloused palm, then turned it over to study the perpetually swollen knuckles, such a mass of scarring that the fur no longer grew there. It startled her, my touch, and I was not certain that she even liked it, but glancing up at her only briefly I said, "Repeat what I just said."

She did so, dutifully and word for word, while my fingertips worked their way up her thick fingers, fuzzy on the backs and rough and bald on the underside. Her claws were heavy and thick, each as long as my own little finger, and they shown blackly. "Careful..." she said, when I felt along the tip of one of them. There was a grimace in her voice when she said it, like she knew that she should not have said it but could not help herself.

There was so much blood spilled by those hands, and all of it for my benefit. "It is not good enough," I said, to myself, but she misunderstood me and began to repeat it again, stammering somewhat this time.

"No," I said, stopping her. I sat her hand back down on the table carefully, then looked back up at her. Her eyes were wide and miserable with confusion, and I could not hold her gaze for long. It did not matter, I told myself. I was damned regardless, so it would not make any difference for me. I took a deep breath, and said, "Forget what I have told you. Say to Enma instead, 'My Mistress takes full responsibility for me and for all of my actions."

There was a rare sort of suspicion in her eyes as she repeated what I'd told her, and perhaps a spark of rebellion. I wondered if she would defy my will again in this, as she did when I demanded of Son Goku that he killed me, when she finds herself before Lord Enma.

I put it aside. "We've other business to discuss."

"Uragiru," she said, and her upper-lip skinned back to show her teeth as she said it.

"Yes," I agreed. "I am certain that the Saiyajin's people know where she is, and that they mean to shield her from me."

"I'll find her," Aiken promised me.

"How?"

"I was talking to those kids - that Boxer and the other one – before you died. And they said that there's a way to _feel_ where people are. You know, like with a scouter, except that you don't need a scouter because you can just do it with your head? Like that. I think I can learn to do it. I've already been trying, and I think that I can learn it."

I thought about that, and about how the Saiyajin's people seemed so often to automatically know where we were... how they approached us almost immediately when we landed on this world, and now Juunanagou seemed to simply know that I was here and alone. I nodded. "That's good, Aiken. That may serve."


	36. Chapter Thirty Six: Aiken

"_There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention." - James Arthur Baldwin_

**Aiken**

The Saiyajin's people haven't been trying to police our actions. Except for what they said about leaving Uragiru alone (which isn't going to happen, no matter what the Super Saiyajin says) they haven't once tried to tell my Mistress or me what to do in the three days since she and Frost have come back to life again. What little we hear from them comes relayed through Frost, who's with them a lot now. Hell, if it wasn't for Frost spending so much time with them, I think most of that lot would have just about forgotten that we were even here by now. It's good that they aren't making nuisances of themselves, but the extent to which we're being ignored shows a fundamental lack of regard for my Mistress which I don't like.

As for my Mistress, she certainly hasn't gone out of her way to approach the Saiyajin or his people. In fact, over the last three days she hasn't once left the little house that Bulma gave us, so neither have I. Frost brings meals to us here, along with news and stories of the Saiyajin's people, though none of these things are of much interest to my Mistress.

I'd thought that the trouble was the Saiyajin and his family – that we were too close to them here for my Mistress's liking or comfort, and that she was purposefully avoiding them by staying inside. Frost must have had the same thought, because he came back here yesterday with a plan to move the little house down the mountain, further away from the home of Son Goku. He had gotten from the Saiyajin's people permission and instructions on how to do so, and had the whole thing planned out, but my Mistress shut him down quickly.

So we're still up here on Son Goku's mountain top. When I pull the curtains back to look outside, I can see Chichi moving around her own home, hanging laundry or working in the garden or else busy with other chores. Other windows show me some of the children, playing at silly games or sparring with each other.

I like to keep a close eye on what's going on out there. Something's got my Mistress badly scared, and I don't know what. It's not the Saiyajin – or at least, it's not only or primarily the Saiyajin. And it can't be Uragiru – without that egg thing she doesn't have a hope of hurting my Mistress again, even if she could get through me, which she never will. But whatever it is, it has my Mistress so scared that she wants to stay near the Saiyajin even more than she wants to get away from him.

The clothing was another thing that I didn't understand. It began that first evening she was back, with the oversized robe. She spent the rest of that evening with one hand clutched at the collar to keep it closed, but by the next morning she was experimenting wildly with the contents of that Bulma woman's closet. Everything in there was a bad fit, cut for a tailless woman who was half-again taller than my Mistress. My Mistress limited herself to tops, returning from repeated trips to the bedroom in high-collared spring jackets or turtlenecks, or with long scarves curled around her neck. She changed several times a day, each new attempt only seeming to frustrate her more, but she never seemed to be able to find what she was looking for.

Frost is aware of all of this, but he doesn't push for answers, at least not in my hearing. Even when he's here, he isn't entirely with us; his focus right now is on the Saiyajin's people, and his mind – if not his heart and loyalty – is with them. He can't wait to get away. This isn't anything new, but lately he's more obvious about it than he's ever been before, possibly because they interest him more than any group he's met in the past. My Mistress has noticed.

Given all the time he has been spending with them, Frost would know which of the Saiyajin's people I need to ask to get what I want, so after he came back down here tonight, I said to him, "I want training. I want to train with some of the Saiyajin's people."

The question didn't surprise Frost. I've accompanied him on some of his trips to potentially dangerous worlds before, kept guard over him on my Mistress's command; this isn't the first time I've asked him to find me a sparring partner from among the natives during a long encampment. "Did you have anyone in particular in mind?" he asked.

"Yeah -" I began, but a small sound from the bedroom led us both to glance toward the closed door, behind which was my Mistress. I listened briefly, my head cocked to the side, but she was only changing again, so I returned by attention to Frost. "Yeah," I said again. "It wouldn't do me any good to spar with the Saiyajin or any of his grown sons – we're too badly outmatched – but I think those two kids who are always sparring out front might do the trick." Of course, they're still way out of my league – worlds above me in power and talent, if not experience – but I'm figuring on that being a plus. I could learn a lot – and get a lot stronger – from being beat up by kids like those. There was also another reason why I wanted to train with them – I figured it would be easier to get the kids to teach me how to sense energy, without raising their suspicions about what I wanted to know about that for. "I don't know their names."

Before Frost could reply, my Mistress spoke from behind the closed door. "The one with the purple hair is called Boxer, and the larger of the two is Tanga. The small girl who is frequently with them is Amaguri."

Frost and I shared a quick look. This was yet another new and confusing thing, that my Mistress should be interested enough in someone else's whelps to remember their names. It's not unusual for Icejin to take a special interest in unusually talented children; Furiza frequently claimed such children, to start them training early for his special forces, as did Kooler. Frost too, frequently took those who showed ability – and not just in combat – under his wing, though he has more consideration for the wishes of the parents than most Icejin. But my Mistress had never had any such interests, so it was stranger. Stranger still that she had even noticed the small girl, as she was an especially sorry scrap of nothing.

When Frost spoke, his voice was carefully neutral; I couldn't tell how much of my plan he'd figured out or what he thought of it. I couldn't tell what he was making of my Mistress's strange behavior, either. "I will try to arrange something," he said.


	37. Chapter Thirty Seven: Frigid

"_Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them." -_ François de La Rochefoucauld

**Frigid**

There's an appalling sort of material vanity implicit in the woman's wardrobe. I understand this cottage to be nothing more than a simple vacation home, a mobile and temporary residence intended for use only during recreational sojourns, and only one of the many in her possession. Nonetheless, the closets and dressers here are filled to bursting with a profusion of outfits and trinkets and all varieties of useless things. In the past, Frost has insisted that this sort of obsession with bedecking one's self with all that is frivolous and gaudy is frequently indicative of a person who is well please by his or her own looks. I cannot believe this. If Bulma was entirely contented with her appearance, then why did she go to such lengths to embellish her form in a manner that effectively obscured so much of it?

No, it's just glitter and gild, signifying nothing meaningful. This business of garb is merely a way for people who are all too alike in their impoverishment of ability to pretend at beginning different – and superior – to others. As with the rest of them, she wears these things to make herself stand out; not for her own gratification, but to communicate her importance to others. Most species are desperately ordinary. They rely on such illusions to signify status in the absence of legitimate power distinctions. It is a silly game.

When he was alive, Furiza had played along with the rules of such games, accommodating himself to the sensibilities of his underlings, at least to the extent that it served his purposes. Always pragmatic, Furiza, flexible even to a fault and willing to tolerate rather a great deal if it would help him reach his goals; consider the ridiculous exhibitions Ginyu was permitted to engage in, simply because he was effective and useful. At the time, what Furiza's actual goals had been had never been clear to me; now, learning what I have about the Dragon Balls, the answer seems more obvious; all the conquests, the expansion of the Empire were to him only entertaining distractions – fringe benefits. His main interest had laid in finding something that could secure his power absolutely and eternally. He couldn't have known exactly what form that something would take, couldn't have even much cared, but he tore through scores of worlds on his meandering quest for it.

Father's methods and motives were a great deal different from Furiza's of course, but he had similar reasons for donning armor. It was a matter of diplomacy for him, of looking like the king his followers expected to have; that meant armor, lavishly adorned. Also, toward the final several decades of his life he began to run toward fat, and the armor was some help in concealing that.

Kooler was an entirely different matter from Furiza and Father. He was always rigidly and completely Icejin, and allowed no concessions, no taint of acculturation to compromise that purity. It was a way for him to give order to his surroundings, and I believe, for him to react against Father without openly disparaging or challenging him. For Kooler, there was only ever one correct way of doing something. He made no exceptions, not for necessity or expediency or for the weaknesses of himself (of which he allowed himself none) or of others. For all that, he was frequently easier to deal with than Furiza; Furiza's behavior was too erratic, too dependent upon his moods, but one could always predict which words or actions would outrage Kooler, and thus avoid them.

Frost, Aiken has told me, sometimes adopts the dress of the people he is studying, when invited to do so. She has witnessed this, during the times I've sent her along to guard him during one of his projects on uncolonized worlds, but I have never seen it myself. In most situations he considers the wearing of clothing or jewelry by Icejin to be a form of clownish imitation, and an embarrassment to everyone involved.

These are not questions that I myself have ever cared to get tangled up in. I've no interest in such things. But now, as I find myself seeking some way to conceal the bruising that damnable boy left at my neck, I wish I had a better instinct for what was appropriate and aesthetically pleasing.

I have been careful not to tear or otherwise damage the possession of our host, yet I fear I've made a mess of things. These fancy scraps of cloth get dirty so easily; even the process of unfolding them, or sitting them on the bed or atop the dresser for a few short hours introduces imperfections; they become wrinkled. Somehow they gather Aiken's short, striped hairs at a shocking rate, though she'd never even entered this room. I am sure that there are means through which these problems might be corrected, but discovering how would require that I ask awkward questions. Matters of such base necessity have always in the past fallen to Uragiru to resolve.

The robe that I have grabbed from its hook in the bathroom immediately after Juunanagou's attack suited me best, though its largeness had been an annoyance and it had restricted my tail. However, having found it in the bathroom as I had, I began almost at once to wonder if it was a garment meant to be worn only in the privacy of that room. I had never seen one of the Saiyajin's people wear such a thing while in the company of others, so there may have been some taboo against doing so. If one of them were to come to the door and see me wearing it, might this be judged as an obscene faux pas? Now that I have consented to play this game I must follow the proper rules, but I am very uncertain as to the finer points of these rules, and so it is very difficult for me to know what is correct.

I've spent much time over the last days reviewing my options, trying new variations of dress to conceal the bruising. Nothing looks right. Nothing pleases me.

Now I was making a new attempt; a jacket – or perhaps a shirt, I couldn't say exactly – long-sleeved and checkered with black and white and grays, made of a fabric that was worn-looking and almost shockingly soft. There was a line of buttons up its center, and a collar that could also be turned upwards and buttoned. When I did so, the collar covered my neck up past the line of my jaw, almost up to my mouth, thus concealing the bruising very effectively. However, I was not at all certain that the collar was meant to be worn like that; if the Saiyajin's people saw me doing so, it might attract more questions than I wanted to answer. I was debating this point while standing in front of one of Bulma's many mirrors (strangely, I have found myself liking the woman, but in some ways she reminds me too much of Uragiru) when Frost knocked softly on the bedroom door. I turned the collar back up to cover my neck, checked the buttons to make certain that they were fastened correctly, then settled silently down on the bed, sitting cross-legged among the pillows as though I had been there for quite some time. Then I said, "Come in."

Frost did so, stooping as he came through the low doorway. He drew the door shut behind him, saying as he did so, "I've just taken Aiken up to the house to speak with Son Gohan about arranging training sessions between her and a pair of the Son family's young men."

"Very good," I said. He sat at the corner of the bed, turning his head at a slight angle to look at me. His big hands hung pooled between his knees. I said, watching him very closely to catch his first reaction before he could quash it, "She believes that she can convince those boys to teach her to 'sense energy' without arousing suspicions, so that we may relocate Uragiru."

He shook his head slowly, but gave nothing else away. "If you consider her plan more closely, you will see why it will never work."

I had not expected this reply, and I looked away from him with a quick jerk of my head, angry. "Have you a better plan, then?" I snapped, challenging him now to find a way to correct his error, to prove that he was completely and forever finished with that woman -

He didn't answer for a long moment. Then – suddenly – I felt the tips of his fingers at my throat. Often, people who've seen nothing about him but his size expect Frost to be clumsy. They expect him to lumber around, to break things by accident when he touches them. He shocks strangers with his grace, with his ability to dial himself back so far that others sometimes forgot about his presence. He didn't tug or pull at the collar; he simply turned it down with a quick movement so light and deft that I barely felt it at all.

It was such an audacious thing for him to do, it was only hours later that I began to suspect that he might have done it to change the subject.

But once he had done it, it was done; the bruising stood revealed, the shape of the hand that had clutched my throat still visible against my skin. I pressed my back against the headboard and glared up at him, my tail lashing against the side of the bed in rage. I did not do myself the indignity of attempting to turn the collar up again.

He stood very quickly, and in his anger he seemed suddenly to fill the entire room. "Who has done this to you?" he demanded. "It was Prince Vegeta, was it not?" There was very little question in his voice.

"Do not aspire to heroics," I said. "It does not suit you.

"_Calm yourself_," I told him, when he still stood, fuming as he stared down at me.

He did not become any calmer, but my voice inspired him to attempt a calmer facade. "Who did this?" he said again. His voice was not so loud now; now it was more of a hiss. That was little better.

He was badly mistaken in suspecting Vegeta, but, I reflected, it was not so surprising that he would err in this; Frost had not been present when I'd arrived on this planet, and he'd always held the Saiyajin in suspicion. "I have encountered Vegeta once since coming here," I said. "He barely looked at me. He does not consider me worth hurting."

Frosty seemed unwilling to accept the truth of this. He struggled with it, and I remembered again how he had hated the Saiyajin, back when they were still in Furiza's employ. The Saiyajin doubtlessly had a great deal to account for, but Frost blamed them for far more than what they were rightly responsible. He blamed them for things that were well outside the realm of their control – for actions that, had I been the perpetrator, he would have labored to excuse away. But the Saiyajin were good at what Furiza set them to, and they enjoyed their work, and that made all the difference in Frost's eyes; it made them a convenient repository for his hatred. As for myself, I never cared for the Saiyajin, but neither did I consider them very important or particularly responsible for the results of their actions; like myself, they were game pieces, not the players.

"Who, then?" he said softly, struggling still to master his anger. Feeling helpless, I've begun to remember since coming here, is not something to which one easily becomes accustomed, though without a doubt Frost has had more practice at it than I. I paused to consider what I should say to that; there a great deal of shame involved in admitting what Juunanagou had been about to do to me, and I was not certain how much I wished to tell him – how much I could bring myself to admit, how much he deserved to know. Before I was prepared to speak again Frost rushed on. "We will go to Son Goku," he said, as though this matter was already decided. "He will put an end to this directly."

No, Frost had never liked the Saiyajin, but he liked _these_ Saiyajin _here_. He liked them rather too much, I thought, and it seemed he trusted them as well, trusted them even enough to expect that they would defend me, and that when he'd only known them for a few days. That made me deeply uneasy.

"No, I don't think so," I said. "It seems to me that I have been looking to the Saiyajin to resolve entirely too many of my problems as of late." Then, before I could think better of it, I heard myself add, "In any case, if I can avoid interference from the Saiyajin's people, Juunanagou might yet end all my troubles for me."

He did not fix on the name, as I'd hoped he would as soon as I'd spoken. Instead, his eyes narrowed, and he said, "Precisely what is that intended to mean?"

"Don't play at ignorance – I told you before, when we were dead." When we were dead... I feel more than slightly mad, still, to even give voice to those words; I should like to know why my life has become so absurdly surreal. "I am only being objective. I am only considering my long-term prospects. Last time I only escaped the worse Hell to which the rest of my family was sent on a technicality. As I don't see many more opportunities to be murdered in my future, the boy night have been exactly what I needed, had he done me the favor of following through. My own poor luck he did not. Only..." I fell quiet, hoping that Frost would interject something, turn the discussion in some other – any other – direction, but he kept his silence.

"Only, I did not wish to be strangled again. It hurt so very much. When he finally released me, I felt so absurdly _grateful_; I feel sick at myself now, just remembering it." There was too much truth loose in the room now. If one of us said the wrong thing, it might take years to repair the damage. Still, I could not seem to stop. "I can't see any way out of this. If Juunanagou does not return to kill me – and he is so erratic, who can say what he will do? - then I am damned, but I do not want to die again so soon."

"I think," Frost began carefully, "that you are... mistaken to view what Lord Enma said to you last time you met him as his final word on the matter. He did not strike me as unjust." I had to fight not to make a face at that; doubtlessly, Enma would have been well pleased by Frost. He would not understand what it was like to have Enma sneer down at him from the other side of that great desk, to be judged and found wanting. "Perhaps, if you are very careful to do nothing more that would displease him, he will see that you -"

I cut him off; I will speak against myself before I hear him voice criticism of me that I've increasingly begun to realize the must have been keeping to himself for decades. "That I've what? That I've reformed? That I'm sorry now? Were it even true, I can not believe that that could matter."

"It must count -" he began, but I cut him off again.

"Consider," I said, "the matter of Uragiru. Should all the work she did with you – all the lives she must certainly have saved – erase the harm she did to you and I? Will it cancel out murders, like weights balancing a scale? I tell you, it will not. She will not go unpunished for that. Yes, and I'll see to it myself still that she is punished for it, but I will not expect Enma to hold me to a different standard than I hold her."

"It won't work," Frost said again, his voice as dull and exhausted as it had been when he was still sick.

He left a short time after that, back up the hill to return to the company of the Saiyajin's people, whose companionship he seemed to prefer over my own. Through the window, I watched him walk toward the Saiyajin's house, to the bustle of scores of family and friends crammed happily into too small a space; as he drew closer to the crowd, which had spilled out into the front yard, I saw that he was as one who had just dropped a heavily load from his shoulders. With them, he smiled and laughed and chattered as easily as they did. If they were still put off by his foreignness, they did not show it from where I was standing; already, the Saiyajin's people seem to consider him to be one of theirs.

I could lose Frost very easily here. It seems possible that I already have.

It was only after he'd ducked inside the house, following the rest of the mob, that I began to wonder his words. "It won't work," he'd said, but surely he'd only been referring to Aiken's plan...


	38. Chapter Thirty Eight: Aiken

"_It is common for a character in a novel to take it upon himself to tell the story. When a character can intervene in this way, we the readers are never dealing with bare facts, but only with stories about facts, subject to the prism of a subject - of a particular intelligence, sensibility and memory - and therefore eminently problematic. Everything contained within the story stems from an eyewitness account. True, the course of the account is likely peculiarly well informed and probably sincere, but he is none the less intimately involved in the affair, and therefore cannot claim to determine the truth of the reported events." - Pierre Bayard_

**Aiken **

Over the next two months we each fell into a pattern. In a lot of ways, it was surprisingly easy to just get used to the way things were here. Of course, Frost adapted quickly – eagerly – as he always did to new places and situations. And I was busy training, getting stronger at a pace that I wouldn't have believed was possible before coming here, learning new abilities that I hadn't even imagined existed. Even my Mistress, who never seemed to become completely at ease here, seemed to settle in a bit more; at least, after the first two weeks she gave up her experiments with the clothing and started leaving the house again.

She has begun taking meals with the Saiyajin's family sometimes, when Son Goten or Bulma invited her up to the house. That Goten just makes everyone else uncomfortable, but my Mistress seems to like Bulma. The part-Saiyajin boys – Bulma's grandsons, both – are completely capable of flying themselves up here to Son Goku's mountaintop, but more often than not she flies them up here in one of her planes. On those days, her and my Mistress are apt to spend the afternoons sitting on the porch and drinking coffee, chatting softly while me and the boys sparred.

The boys are Bulma's grandchildren, but Amaguri isn't any direct blood of hers, just the all-human half-sister of Boxer, and she is completely lacking in ability as a fighter. Still, Bulma brings her along with the boys on these trips; she is convinced that the girl is sharp, and seems to be grooming her for some future task, maybe a spot in the financial empire that Bulma's family heads. The girl usually stays near Bulma and my Mistress, sitting in the grass and playing at silly games with her dolls.

Those boys are ideal sparring partners. Boxer didn't look much like a Saiyajin – lanky and purple-haired and tailless as he was – and when he wasn't fighting her was just as soft-hearted as any of these others here. But when he was sparring the kid was a zippy little scrap of viciousness. Once he got going you could see plain as anything what was in his blood, that he was a true Saiyajin and really the grandson of Prince Vegeta. He was a cold, dirty fighter, quick to exploit the slightest opening and mean in a way that he couldn't have learned from anyone here but must've been born knowing.

Tanga was Vegeta's grandson, too, (though he didn't look much more like a Saiyajin than the other one did), but he reminded me more of Son Goku than anyone else. He was too fair for his own good, and too convinced that everyone else would be fair too, despite how many times Boxer and me showed him different. But he was a patient teacher, willing to explain things to me as many times as I needed them explained, and that more than made up for his other shortcomings. Most of what I learned about sensing ki I got from Tanga.

I was always real careful to be out of the adults' sight and hearing when I asked questions about sensing ki, and I don't think either of the boys realized that they were teaching me something that maybe I wasn't supposed to be learning. But even if they had mentioned it to someone, I was pretty sure that their parents and grandparents wouldn't connect my learning that to Uragiru. It's funny, almost, how the Saiyajin's people expect us to listen to them just cause they say so; I mean, most folks listened to my Mistress and her family, yeah, but that was because they always backed up their words with actions. The Saiyajin's people don't seem cut out to do that.

I've gotten a lot stronger from training with those boys, but there still wasn't any thought of me ever sparring with one while he was being a Super Saiyajin. I don't think I'll ever be fit enough to stand up against a Super Saiyajin for long, no matter how much I train; even with all the work I was putting into it, in their normal form those boys were still strong enough to mop the floor with me without even trying.

Sometimes one of those boys would forget how much stronger they were than me; this was especially true of Boxer, who, when he started to get heated up tended to forget – or maybe disregard – the difference between our power levels. Then he'd fetch me a blow that'd damn near about knock my head off. He was always sorry afterward, ashamed with himself for losing control, but I didn't have many complaints. Every time those boys broke me down I healed up stronger, just the same as the Saiyajin did. And another thing was, if I hung around Son Goku's house long enough after an especially tough session, looking like a sad enough case, someone was likely to give me a sensu bean; they're almost all fighters, the Saiyajin's people, but none of them like to see anyone hurting. The sensu beans sped the entire process up considerably.

I'm stronger than my Mistress now.

I know, because I can sense ki pretty well now, but I don't think she's realized it. It's not a bad thing, I don't think – I'm better suited to keep her safe now than I ever was before – but I don't mean to tell her, and I hope that none of the Saiyajin's people are tactless enough to mention it. They almost never seem to intend to do it, but they cause her to lose face in their presence often enough already. It might be that this knowledge would shame her, and I don't mean to do anything that adds to her troubles if I can help it. But I'm uneasy keeping things from her.

This place – these people – diminish her. She's become uncertain about almost everything – she's slow to speak these days, and her words are often tentative, sometimes confused. It would be best for us to get away from here as soon as the matter of Uragiru is resolved. That's why I've been working so hard. I don't have much talent for this ki sensing stuff – I know I haven't picked it up as fast as the boys seem to think I should – but for a chance of getting even with Uragiru for my Mistress I keep working at it all the time.

I would have liked to ask Frost about how to approach some of these problems, but I don't trust him to give me the right advice as much as I used to. Uragiru was always his creature – if he couldn't see what she was up to, then how much can his judgment be trusted? And there's another thing.

He and my Mistress are fighting. Not in the common and shameless way that Son Goku and his wife fight, with Chichi shouting abuses at the Super Saiyajin so loudly that even Frost and my Mistress could hear them through the walls of the little house that Bulma had lent my Mistress, though both of them pretended that they didn't hear because they knew what good manners were. But they _were_ fighting. With short pauses and pointed silences and in carefully chosen, exceedingly tactful words, they were fighting, and with questions that were deliberately obtuse, and with answers that deflected those questions, and with a hundred calculated little actions or failures to act.

It had something to do with Uragiru, too, I think. He still seemed more hurt and confused about what she'd done than he was angry. He kept worrying at the thing, trying to sniff out a motive – to make sense of it. All that was wearing hard on my Mistress.

But it wasn't just Uragiru – it also had to do with him and the Saiyajin's people. Before now, I don't think my Mistress had ever seen with her own eyes what Frost gets like when he's around outsiders who treat him like he's one of theirs – folks who don't understand how far above them he ought to be, or who tend to forget (because he lets them) if they do know. I've seen it happen lots of times – how quickly he adopts their mannerisms and turns of speech, how intent he becomes upon doing a thing in the way that they consider proper and how happy he gets once he's figured it out – but it was a shock to my Mistress, every time she saw him at it.

Another thing that they've been arguing softly about – picking at each other over – and this is one thing that Frost has been more vocal about. It has to do with the long walks that my Mistress has been taking in the wilds surrounding the Saiyajin's mountain.

It's true that it's odd that my Mistress should now wish to spend so much time exploring savage places; in the past, she's rarely even liked to leave her ship. They're keeping this matter to themselves, Frost and my Mistress are, but I've caught a few snatches of Frost's arguments against these walks. "You are being fatalistic," I've heard him say, and several times I've heard the words "unnecessary risk." This is a new and outrageous thing, that Frost should believe that he's entitled to tell my Mistress where she should or should not go, but he doesn't like that he's being ignored. But then, there seems to be plenty of things about Frost that my Mistress doesn't like right now, either.

Time was, I depended on Uragiru and Frost to be the brains of this operation, trusted the pair of them to work matters more complicated than fighting out in such a way that everything came out well (or as close to well as we could get) for my Mistress. I can't do that anymore. Goes without saying that it was a mistake to ever trust Uragiru, but it seems to me that Frost's judgment is just about as suspect as hers at this point. After all, just whose mistake was Uragiru? Frost was the one who brought Uragiru onto my Mistress's ship, and he's the one who made excuses for her every time she acted badly. He trusted her. He knew her better than anyone, and he still didn't see it coming, so what does that say about him? And he still hasn't lifted a finger to help us get Uragiru; he's with the Saiyajin's people almost all the time now. By now he could have conned one of them into telling him where she was, but he hasn't.

Never mind, though. It might have taken me a bit longer working by myself than it would have if Frost had been doing his bit, but I've found Uragiru myself.

And all that's why I'm down in the woods right now, traveling on foot while I follow my Mistress's ki. For the last couple of weeks – ever since I started to get a handle on it – I've been suppressing my ki whenever I'm not actively training. See, I know for a fact that someone – probably that Yamcha – has been training Uragiru about ki, too, though she's been a slower learner than me. So, since I figure she can sense me ki when I'm powered up, I want her to get used to me dropping off her radar, so that when I finally do move on her she won't suspect what's coming.

When I first started learning to sense ki I'd thought that maybe my Mistress might like it if I taught her to do the same sometime, but now I think that was a bad idea. My Mistress would not want to know how exposed her feelings and emotions really are in the eyes of the Saiyajin's people. Another thing that I'm keeping to myself... It's bad to keep secrets from my Mistress, but I can't think of any way to do better. Often times, my Mistress's ki signals a lot of mixed and confusing feelings when she's out here in the wilds – like she's badly scared and eager at the same time, looking for something but hoping she doesn't find it – but right now it feels real calm, like she's almost asleep.

Ancient forest rings the Saiyajin's mountain for several kilometers, with trees so wide that you could have hollowed out one to make a sizable house, so tall that you could almost believe that they brushed the clouds. But once you leave the mountain, the trees start to thin out in favor of rocky, uneven land and high grasses.

Still following my Mistress's ki, I came to a slow-moving river that was so wide that I could barely see to the other side. I was still keeping my ki down, so instead of flying over the river I just jumped, using as little energy as possible. I fell a couple of meters short, landing ankle-deep in the cool water, but I didn't much mind. I'm barefoot – my boots were long ago lost on the field where my Mistress fought the Super Saiyajin – and I could feel the wet mud of the river bottom under the pads of my feet.

On this planet, they do make foot gear for people with feet that are somewhat like my own – Dogs, those folks are called, always with the large D, because small-d dogs are something else completely – but they're specialty items. I'd have had to go to one of the cities to get some, or else a dealer would have had to come out here to take my size. Bulma offered to arrange that for me, but it wasn't worth the trouble. Anyway, my Mistress is worried enough about the debt that she's running up with these people.

The Saiyajin hasn't said anything about repayment – he doesn't seem to have much interest in wealth, and his head for figures seems to be even worse than mine – but that Bulma woman has it in her to cut someone's throat if it means she'll turn a profit, that much is obvious. She didn't get to be the richest woman on this planet in the normal way, after all. No, she isn't on the top because she's strong; she got there because she's good at business, and that's unfamiliar territory for my Mistress. She's very concerned that Bulma might try to press her advantage.

The little things that Bulma and the Saiyajin's family have given us – the little house, food, and even the sensu beans – are simple enough to repay, but who knows what they might want in exchange for two lives brought back from the dead? How can anyone place a value on the impossible made real, and if that can be done, what would that figure look like? The Empire isn't as rich as it used to be, and with the possibility of Son Goku – or even Prince Vegeta – working as her enforcer – Bulma could make a lot of trouble for us if she wanted to. Frost says she'll be more than content with the data he promised her – she's especially hungry for some of the tech schematics and blueprints. He says that as long as we frame these things as gifts given out of gratitude rather than a repayment for services we'll be fine.

I hope he's right about that, but I'm not about to add to the debt by getting new boots that I don't need or want. For the same reason, when my armor finally fell apart – Uragiru had gone a good way toward destroying it when she tried to kill me, and all the sparring that I've been doing since finished the job – I just went to Chichi and asked her if she didn't have any of Son Goku's old gis that I could have. Turned out that she had a ton left over from before Son had been as bulky as he is now – she never throws anything away. They're a little tight across the shoulders and around the hips – I'm wider than Son Goku is in those places – for the time being. Anyway, they'll do until I have a chance to get new, proper armor. And I traded Chichi a wild pig I killed for the gis, so they're mine, free and clear.

Now I yanked the legs of the gi up, so they wouldn't get any wetter than they were already, and wadded the rest of the way across the river. The land on the other side was sandy, covered in high, coarse grasses and scrub-brush. Even if I hadn't been able to see my Mistress's ki, it would have been pretty easy to track her here. She'd been traveling along game trails to keep out of brush, and every now and then I could see the imprint of the palm of her foot in the sandy earth.

I finally caught up with her a couple of kilometers further on, at a mound of clean, sandy-brown stones The sun was coming down warmly from the sky, and she was basking in it, her eyes closed, looking completely and entirely relaxed. She was sitting at the top of the stone, leaning back against the palms of her hands, her face turned up to the sky. Her legs were crossed, one dangling over the edge of the rock, the other jutting outward, bent at the knee at a slight angle.

And I think, that Juunanagou wanted me to give my Mistress up – to turn my back on her. But he doesn't know anything. He doesn't see anything that's worth anything in anyone except himself, and even then he doesn't act as though he values himself as much as he claims, neither.

I hate more than anything to disturb her now. There's a number of small lizards sunning themselves on the stone with my Mistress, but when I approach they scatter, skittering off into the safety of the shadowy hiding places between the cracks in the stones. At the same time, something happened to make my Mistress open her eyes and turn her head to look at me.

"Aiken!" she said, startled.

"I'm ready," I told her.


	39. Chapter Thirty Nine: Frigid

_If someone tells you he is going to make 'a realistic decision,' you immediately understand that he is going to do something bad._ - Mary McCarthy

Frigid

"I'm ready," Aiken said to me, having appeared in this secluded place from out of nowhere. I had come out here – so far from everyone else – to give Juunanagou a chance to find me alone, though I'd dreaded the thought that he might take advantage of the opportunity. When one is not actively involved in dying, I have found that it is much more difficult to bait death, though I am certain things would go better for me in the long term if I could arrange to be murdered. This plan has vexed Frost greatly, but he's offered me no better options. He is intent on denying the fact that I'm in any danger of finding myself in an eternal Hell, as he believes (in so many words, though he'd never put the matter so bluntly) that Lord Enma only talked a tough line with me because he knew I would be wished back to life and wanted to see to it that I would behave myself in the future, but Frost gives both Enma and myself too much credit, as always he does everyone; the great hairy bureaucrat had not anticipated my resurrection and I will not avoid the same sentence as the rest of my family on my own merits alone.

Thus far Juunanagou has not shown himself. Instead of the boy, Aiken stood before me now, at the base of the stone on which I was seated. I stared down at her as she went on, "I can sense ki now, and I can hide my own energy, too. So I'm ready. I'm ready to go kill Uragiru.

"Hell," she went on, and I could see the gleam of her eye-teeth as she spoke, "I've been ready for that last bit for a long time. But now I can make it happen."

Hell, I thought, the word echoing in my mind in a way that Aiken most certainly never intended. Hell – yes, and therein lies the rub.

I've been stupid, and her expectancy is a cause for embarrassment to me now; for all the time that Frost and I have spent discussing – arguing – over the finer points and possible ramifications of Aiken's plan, I had not thought to tell her that I had been forced to decide against it.

"Aiken," I said, trying to think of some way to explain that situation that would leave neither of us feeling the fool. "It's good – it is excellent – that you have learned this new skill. It will prove useful in the future, I've little doubt." In the normal course of things, she would have drunken up such heavy praise; now, she only looked up at me, eager – almost impatient – that I should come to my point and release her to her task.

I hesitated, then fell back on one of the many arguments that Frost had raised against her plan. "But, Aiken, I do not believe that you will even be able to locate her. Uragiru will have been studying this technique as well – she will have expected that we'll be looking for her, and so she will have applied all possible effort to learning how to hide her own... ki. And she will have had help in learning all this. And, Aiken, you know that she's always been a quicker study than you -"

"Not this time," Aiken cut in. "There isn't any doubt that she's been working just as hard as me at learning this thing, but I'm worlds ahead of her." She paused, seeming to marshal her thoughts. "It's like she's... blocked on learning this trick. She isn't making any progress."

Aiken stopped again, pulling a face that showed her own frustration with her inability to say exactly what it was she wanted to say, and then tried starting over on a new track. "See, if you want to hide your ki, you have to start by pushing everything you're feeling – good or bad, mad or happy or whatever – down. You can't really stop yourself from feeling it, you know? But you have to be able to make it smaller, sort of less important to yourself. She was always really good at keeping what she was feeling on the inside, I guess, or else we would have figured out what she was up to a lot sooner. She could keep that all from showing up in the way she acted – most of the time, anyway – but she doesn't seem to have a damn bit of control over what's going on inside herself. She's angry all the time, and it shows in her ki. Scared, too. It's really easy to pick up on, even from here." She stopped again, closed her eyes briefly.

"Yeah," she said. "I can sense her right now. I know just where she is, and I don't think she has the slightest idea where on this Earth or anywhere else I might be."

Simply to throw her off her original point, I said, "I am certain that the Saiyajin's people have told her where we are staying, Aiken, if only so she may avoid this place."

She would not be distracted. "Yeah," she agreed. "But what I meant was that she won't ever see me coming, once I set out to get her." Then she added, "I can go right now, if you give me leave to do so?" An eager whine in her voice, she said again, "I'm ready."

"Aiken," I said flatly, "It cannot work. You will be caught -"

Wonders of wonders, she interrupted me to argue. "I won't get caught," she promised, entirely too certain on this point for her own good or mine. I wondered then how much of Aiken's desire to get even with Uragiru was for the sake of avenging what had been done to me and how much of it was purely personal, between the two of them only. Aiken must have felt considerably shamed, for such a threat to have existed right under her nose for so long, undetected... It is certainly not Aiken fault that Uragiru managed to fool her – she fooled us all, of course, though Aiken least of all – but Aiken does not excuse herself lightly. She is a very good Inujin, and as such her sense of self-worth is entirely bound up in her ability to serve and protect me; her pride must have been greatly wounded by this entire business, and that was the only reason I had allowed this discussion to go for so long, though it was now becoming clear to me that it had been a mistake to open this matter to debate. Aiken went on, feckless and insistent, "I'll make sure she's alone – no one will even see me. And then I'll be gone again so fast that it'll be like I'd never even been there."

"Aiken," I said, losing my patience quickly now, because our inability to take action on this frustrates me as badly as it does her. "There is a very limited pool of people on this planet who posses both the ability and desire to harm Uragiru. Even if you managed to complete your task without leaving any witnesses behind, you and I could come under suspicion at once."

"Say Juunanagou did it."

"Excuse me?"

"We can tell the Saiyajin's people that Juunanagou did it. They'll believe that – he isn't any part of them. And he hasn't got a ki, so it might be a really long time before they can even find him to question him about it. We'll be long gone by then."

I could not say which was more troublesome; how far she'd developed this plan under her own initiative or how blind she seems to its insurmountable flaws. "We will never be outside of Son Goku's reach again, Aiken. Have you forgotten that? He can find us anywhere now, at any time, as easily as he did the Namekjin on their new planet."

"It don't matter," she said. "Even if he does find out who killed Uragiru, Son Goku won't do anything. He didn't do anything to Uragiru when he found out she killed you and Frost, and he didn't do anything to me, either, when I tried to kill her. He never punishes anyone, he just lets everyone get away with anything and run wild -"

"Be that as it may – and incidentally, I think you've misjudged Son Goku on that point, as I believe he'd react much differently to her killing than he might have two months ago, now that she's joined his people – Son Goku's reaction is not my primary concern."

"Then who -" she began, but I cut her off.

"My answer is no," I said, "and that's the last word on topic. I don't expect to be troubled any further by this matter. Am I understood?"

Surpassingly strange, I thought I caught a glimpse of rebellion in her eyes, that defiant gleam that I'd sighted and dismissed in Uragiru's glaze so many times. But it was gone very quickly, long before I was even sure that it had really been there. Aiken dropped her ears and nodded.

And – more fool I – I believed that was the end of it.


	40. Chapter Forty: Juunanagou

_I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo, "did you tell me?" - Annie Dillard_

**Juunanagou**

I think it's been entirely too long since I've stirred up some shit with this lot.

I have been around, mind you, and I've been watching. But after that weird-ass thing with the fire-bird I've been sort of hesitant to get more deeply involved.

Yeah, cause the one time I did I guess I sort of lost my temper with Frigid. I probably shouldn't have done that, but she's such a goddamn _angsty_ pain in the ass. And I refuse to feel guilty about it; she shouldn't have been so freaking rude, especially when I was just trying to do her a favor. Honest to god, none of these people have the sense to take good advice when it's offered.

Well, to hell with all of them – and I mean it. To hell with all three, but some sooner than others.

The last straw was when I overheard Aiken say to the Icejin, "Blame it on Juunanagou." I was going to leave them alone before, honest – well, probably anyway, unless I got real bored – but if they mean to drag me back into their nonsense I'll come on my own terms.

And that was why, when Aiken turned and walked away to leave Frigid on her basking stone, droopy eared and shuffling because she'd been told that she wouldn't be allowed to kill Uragiru after all, she met me on the trail.

I could tell that Frigid hadn't told Aiken about our little argument, simply from the fact that Aiken didn't attack me right off. (I'd seen some of the pathetic attempts Frigid had made to cover the bruises, but I hadn't thought anyone – even Aiken – would be dumb enough to buy into that ruse. But apparently I'd been mistaken). Instead, she just sort of stood in the trail and glared at me, showing a flash of tooth like she believed that would convince me to get out of her way.

"So is that it?" I asked her. "You're just going to drop it like that, and let Uragiru get away with everything she did?"

At first, she didn't take the bait. Instead, she growled at me, "You shouldn't be listening in on conversations that don't concern you."

"Well?" I said.

"You can't fool me," she said, and though I would have normally begged to differ, what she said next did surprise me. "I know you knew what Uragiru was up to before anyone else did. But you didn't say, you didn't tell anyone. So as far as I'm concerned, that makes you just about as bad as her. You and her both, you're just lucky that my Mistress doesn't want me starting trouble with the Saiyajin's people -"

"Firstly," I cut in. "I'm sure as hell not one of Son Goku's people, so you can get that stupid idea out of your stupid head right now. And secondly, that's exactly what I wanted to discuss – why do you figure your Mistress wants to let Uragiru off?"

She don't miss a beat. "What my Mistress does or doesn't want isn't any business of a little runt like you," she shot back.

"The correct answer to that question is of course that she doesn't want to let Uragiru get away, but that she is afraid that if she has you kill Uragiru she will be punished. I'm sure this is a common problem; the world is probably full of people who are only alive because it's illegal to kill them. And you can huff and puff at me at me all you want, but you and I both just heard her say just as much, not ten minutes ago; she doesn't want to piss off any of the Saiyajin or their friends.

"Now, I'll add to her own words a bit of speculation. I can't prove that this is true, but I've got enough personal and second-hand experience with this stuff to make a pretty good guess.

"I'd bet just about anything that your mistress is more worried about what the gods will do to her if she has Uragiru killed than she is about Son Goku."

Aiken scoffed at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. "My Mistress doesn't even _believe_ in nonsense like gods," she said, "Let alone worry about what they might think about her."

"Hey – I can't fault her on that. I used to be of the same opinion, point of fact, up until I met a god or two myself. Now that she's had the experience of finding herself on the wrong side of Enma's desk, I'll bet she's reassessed her opinion."

"Enma..." she repeated, chewing over the name like it reminded her of something, but after a couple of seconds her bafflement turned back into suspicion. "How many conversations between my Mistress and me have you ease dropped on?" she demanded.

"Point of fact, very few. I tend to get bored of histrionics pretty quickly. But like I said, I've been dead before myself and -"

"Has everyone on this stupid planet died just to come back?" she demanded.

"Just about," I said. "Everyone over a certain age, anyhow. But returning to what we were talking about, I would like to make a suggestion."

"You would, huh? I'm not interested."

I ignored her. "My suggestion is that, if you were to go after Uragiru right now, you could -"

"My Mistress said not to!"

"Yes. Yes, and that will be my point, if you ever let me get to it. If you killed Uragiru without your mistress's permission – right after she'd forbidden you to do so! - no one would be able to blame her for it, would they?"

"I already thought of that," she confessed, surprising me again. "But it won't work. The Saiyajin's people would never believe that story. They'll think my Mistress put me up to it, no matter what either of us said -"

"You'd be surprised what those people will believe," I said. "You shouldn't have any trouble selling them the story, especially since it's true. And like I've already told you, I don't really think its the Saiyajin's folks that she's worried about."

Aiken shifted on her bear feet uneasily. "I've never -" she started, but then trailed off. "She said that I shouldn't..."

"But you know that she really wants you to. There's no question of that." I paused, giving her a chance to argue. Instead, she just gave a hesitant little nod. "The only real question is if you think getting your mistress what she wants is worth taking the fall for her."

And when the matter was framed like that, there wasn't any question but that Aiken would do exactly what I wanted her to do. And it didn't take much more convincing, either. A few minutes later she set off for Western Capital.

Can't start a party like this and then miss out on the proceedings. I waited until Aiken was far enough ahead of me that she wouldn't notice that she was being trailed, and then I followed her.


	41. Chapter Forty One: Frigid

_Bringing a child into the world is, after all, a visceral statement of hope if ever there was one; an insistence that the world does not have to be taken as one finds it; a kind of promissory note to the future; a demand that we can and must carry on. - Tim Wise_

_Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive. - Josephine Hart_

**Frigid**

I had understood that this place – this planet, or else the people on this planet – have the ability to effect great change upon a person.

That my brief encounter with Vegeta did not end differently is evidence enough of this. Were he still anything like the resentful and vindictive boy I remembered from before, he couldn't have hesitated to attack me and mine rather than contenting himself with flinging a few insults at Son Goku.

There's something about this place that inflicts a sort of creeping sense of peace upon one's self, whether one wills it or no. There's a sense of security here, as absurd and counter-intuitive as that may seem, given the fact that I'm now surrounded by more people who are capable of doing me grievous harm than ever before in my life, even when Furiza and his elites were still alive.

Strange thoughts, all of these, without a doubt. I've become unaccustomed to myself in the weeks that I've spent on earth, but this place _does_ change you. I couldn't deny that, and I was not at all certain that I wished to fight it.

But my mistake was that, even as aware as I was of the effect this place was having upon my own self, I failed to recognize that it might be working changes on the others who had come here with me as well, and in the most extreme of ways.

For one, I would never have expected Aiken to disobey me in the way that she did.

I was nearly asleep, reclining on a warm stone in a clearing in the Saiyajin's woods, basking, when her limp form fell from the sky before me. The sun on this planet is neither as warm nor as bright as I might like, but it is nonetheless pleasant.

My eyes were closed, but when Aiken hit the stone her body made a loud thumping sound, and I opened them. I saw her lying there, and I was quite certain that she was dead.

It does not matter, I told myself, struggling to control the roaring inside my head. Death was far from permanent here; Son Goku would wish her back into life without a doubt.

I looked up sharply, expecting to see Juunanagou there above me.

It never occurred to me that it might be someone different, you see. And I certainly did not look to see Uragiru, who had never been powerful enough to do harm to Aiken, even before Aiken had begun intensive training with the Super Saiyajin's grandchildren.

But it was Uragiru there, hovering in the air above me. I moved quickly to my feet, hands balled at my sides, as she lowered herself to my level.

The first thought that came to me when she landed before me was simply, _She's gotten so fat!_ yet as soon as the thought came to me I recognized that it was incorrect. It was not fat that made her stomach swell that way. She was gravid – pregnant, their type would call it – yet there was no more sense to that than my first explanation. It's been only two weeks since I saw her last, and certainly she could not have grown so large so quickly... could she have?

"Aiken?" I said to Uragiru. I looked at Uragiru as I said it, cocking my head in question. I did not so much as glance at the body; I would not have her know that she'd been successful in hurting me through Aiken, whatever trickery Uragiru might have used to get the upper-hand with her.

"You shouldn't have sent her after me," Uragiru said. "But then, you've always had Aiken do your dirt work for you, isn't that so?"

"You know very well that that's a lie. I never set her on you," I said, in response to her earlier words; I understood too well that Uragiru had come under the protection of the Super Saiyajin's people and that the repercussions for retaliating against her might be sever, and for this reason I most certainly had not chanced sending Aiken after her, as much as I might have wanted to.

As for her other words, the made me uneasy and so I ignored them.

As she ignored me. "I didn't wish to hurt her, you know. I never wanted Aiken to be hurt in any of this. The poor girl's never been anything except what you made of her. She's as much a victim as I am – as my people were – no matter what she's done in your service."

So now we're returned to the matter of Furiza's destruction of her home planet, all those years ago. I tell her, "I'd no hand in that, either, as well you know."

"Not my world, no," she admits. "But there were others."

The laugh scalded my throat. "Now, you can't pretend that your own hands are clean in that regard," I said. Everyone of any small talent, after all, had been implicated in Furiza's planet trade. More than once, Uragiru herself had been enlisted to clear out more ineffectual populations.

"There's no comparison between you and me," she said. I cocked my head, waiting for her to continue. "I hated it – with every fiber of my being, I hated it. But you – you never cared. The only thing that ever concerned you was your own convenience, your own petty and selfish little problems. The only thing that's ever separated you from Furiza was ability and ambition – you're as bad as he was, in every other respect.

"What were you doing, while Frost and I were saving what little we could save? Brooding on your ship over your own helplessness, doing nothing, passive with repulsive self-pity –"

I wonder if she actually believes that she's telling me anything of which I was not already aware. "I'm in possession of a number of character flaws," I said, cutting her off. "And I suppose this explains well enough why you might want to do me harm, but it also raises a separate question.

"Why Frost, Uragiru? What was his failing, that you killed him for it?"

This was something that had been troubling me since I first learned of Uragiru's role in Frost's "illness." I've had the sense that Frost knows the answer to this question himself, but he has no been forthcoming with me as to the answer.

The poison in Uragiru voice when she replies is the type used to conceal bone-deep dread. "That's very simple. Frost was talking about children. He was absolutely certain that he'd be able to talk you into hatching some egg with him."

I might have laughed if it wasn't all so hellishly absurd – was that really where this had all begun? "He was wrong in that. I might have told you as much, had you come to me with your concerns." I've no lover or desire for children, after all, and no intention of deliberately bringing into the world someone who might well outclass me. I'd quite enough of that when my father and brothers were still alive, and I don't mean to repeat the experience.

"I couldn't chance it, frankly. Your bloodline is poisonous, and there was too much danger that he'd get his way, and the two of you would have some over-powered monster like Furiza. Everything might have started over again. I had to make sure it didn't happen again."

"Don't fancy yourself a hero for betraying someone who trusted you too well. Frost had a father's affection for you." She shrugged, as though she'd come to peace with the contractions of this long ago, but there's some shame in her yet, for she won't meet my eyes.

"You're one to talk of toxic genes, in any case," I went on. "Is that a Saiyajin's whelp inside of you?"

"No," she said, and left the subject there.

When she spoke again it was on another topic, and now she did look me in the eyes, and her eyes were glassy and hard. "I could kill you again now if I wanted to, do you know that? They've means of training here that you couldn't imagine, and I've far outstripped you."

I don't doubt this, somehow, though I don't understand it.

Later, some of the Saiyajin's people will fill in a few of the details for me – I'll come to learn that she's spent time training in some other realm, a place called "the room of spirits and time" where time the flow of time moves differently. That scar-faced man, Yamcha, whom despite his looks is not after all actually a Saiyajin, went there with her. This would be the explanation for the advanced stage of her pregnancy, as well.

But that will come later, and now I only say, "And so?" She'd do me a great favor if she killed me now – things will go better for me if I come before that over-sized bureaucrat's desk again a victim of murder – but yet I find that I no longer have it in myself to court death as I had before.

She shrugged again. "I don't need to." What Uragiru said next seemed a non sequitur to me, but perhaps the connection made sense in her own mind. "This is a good place, and I'm happy here," she said, and almost unconsciously one of her hands rose to her belly, resting there protectively. "I'm staying.

"You, though... you are going to leave."

This is an obvious threat, but I can save some face by refusing to acknowledge it as such. "I am," I agreed, abandoning whatever foolish desires I might have had to the contrary. It would not have worked in any case – Uragiru might have found a place here, but the truth is that I could never have fit in here. "But not by your bidding. I'm only here still because we're awaiting the return of my ship."

"Good," Uragiru said. "Then I've nothing more to say to you."

And she turned her back on me and took to the sky, and a few moments later she had disappeared from view. I'd never see her again.

On the ground, Aiken groaned. Her hand clutched at the stone, claws scratching deep gorges in its surface.

"_Aiken_," I said, dropping to my knees beside her. There's blood at the back of her skull, and a bump the size of my fist. When she turns her head to look up at me, I see that there is more blood around Aiken's face, and that some of her teeth are broken. It's obvious that she's been on the losing end of an extremely difficult battle – and a completely one-sided one, considering how unruffled Uragiru looked – and her eyes are bleary and unfocused.

I receive no sensible explanation for what happened as I help her get to her feet, nor as we make our slow way back to the home that Bulma gifted me with. She's far to unsteady to walk under her own power, let alone fly, and so I sling her arm over my shoulder and support her in that manner.

When we've drawn close to the house, Frost comes outside and relieves me of my burden, staggering a bit under Aiken's great weight as he leads her cautiously through the doorway. I follow them, looking nervously toward the Saiyajin's home, hoping that no one but Frost witnessed our approach.

Frost lowers Aiken gently onto the couch. Sitting there as she is, the two of us are almost of a height. There's still great confusion in her eyes, but they are filled also with grief and shame. "I'm sorry," she moaned. "I've done bad. I'm sorry I went." She'd repeated the same thing half a hundred times on the journey back here. Her words shed little on what happened, aside from seeming to confirm that Uragiru was speaking the truth when she said that Aiken had attacked her first, though I'd no hand in that.

I made to go to the Super Saiyajin's home, intending to obtain for her another of those healing beans if I could, but when I attempted to leave Aiken became extremely agitated.

Frost went in my stead, nodding his consent when I cautioned him to tell the Saiyajin's people as little as possible. It wouldn't do for them to learn of whatever trouble Aiken had caused before I myself understood the situation.

While I waited for him to returned I reflected upon the cruelty of the dead race which had first engineered the Inujin, bringing into the world a species so dependent upon their masters' and their master's approval that all of this mess should cost Aiken so dearly.

The truth came out more quickly once Aiken had recovered from her injuries, having been given one of the beans upon Frost's return.

This is what she told me: That Juunanagou had come to her to say that she ought to go and kill Uragiru for my sake. When she argued that I had not given her orders to do such a thing, and had in fact expressly told her to leave Uragiru alone, the boy argued that I had only refrained from giving such instructions because I wished to avoid getting into trouble – both with the Super Saiyajin and the gods. However, he told her, I truly wished for Uragiru to be dead, so if Aiken were loyal to me she would take it upon herself to see to it.

There was enough truth in this argument that Aiken had accepted his advice – he was, after all, only telling her to do what she wished very much to do herself – and used one of the new skills that she'd learned while training with the young Saiyajins to locate Uragiru. Uragiru had seemed to sense her coming, as she had fled from the city where she had been and led Aiken into the wilderness.

There they had fought, and Aiken had found herself astonishingly outmatched. "I kept telling myself that I couldn't lose," said Aiken now, who had only ever lost one other fight in my defense before, and that against the Super Saiyajin. "Because if she could kill me, she could kill you even easier, but I couldn't – I couldn't do it – and..."

I cut in. "Are you stronger than I am now, Aiken?" I asked her. The guilty look on her face was all the confirmation I needed. "Don't trouble yourself over it, Aiken. It's good that you've gotten stronger. It will help you look after me even more effectively than you have in the past."

The expression of joy that splits Aiken's face is that of someone who's heard something that she's been waiting her entire life to hear. I reflect that I should praise her more often – that it would cost me nothing to do so – but I know myself well enough to know that I will forget to do so later.

Frost interjected himself in the conversation. "I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding something," he said. "What does this Juunanagou have against you, that he's creating problems like this?"

"He's mad at me," Aiken said, speaking before I could. "He wanted me to take the dragon balls and run off and wish to be immortal like he is. But I told him that he was stupid and that I wouldn't even, that all I wanted was to get my Mistress back alive." She turned to me and added, "This is when you were still dead."

"Thank you, Aiken, I gathered as much." I looked back to Frost. "Juunanagou approached me with a similar offer. He despises the other powerful people here, but he is hideously lonely. I believe that he's seeking companionship in his immortality, if only to have someone to complain about the Super Saiyajin's people with." My hand crept up to my neck, where until recently the bruise that Juunanagou had given me had been. "When I dismissed him, he became violent toward me."

"I'll kill him," Aiken said, lurching to her feet. I turned to glare at her. "May I kill him?" she said, rephrasing herself.

"You can't and you won't," I said. "He's far too strong for you to even attempt it."

"I can keep training," she ventured. "I know I can get a lot stronger than I am already, and then I could kill –"

"Aiken," I said. "Leave it. You'll heed me this time. Do you understand me?"

She nodded and lowered herself back down onto the couch, cringing at the anger in my voice. Well, but I can't risk her running off to do something stupid without my leave again.

I turned to Frost. "Juunanagou is a danger to us all. He's unpredictable, and Son Goku doesn't take the threat seriously enough to keep him in check. We need to get off this planet as soon as possible."

Frost nodded. "I meant to leave with Son for New Namek within the next week or so, in any case," he said. "I'll convince him to leave early, and to take you and Aiken along as well."

"Good," I said.


	42. Chapter Forty Two: Juunanagou

"_History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose." – John le Carre_

**Juunanagou**

There isn't much else to say.

When I sent Aiken after Uragiru, I'd expected it to result in a bit more excitement. Some type of drama that would draw Son and the others in. Something – anything – to liven things up around here.

Instead, Frigid, Frost and Aiken disappeared off the face of the planet the very next day, along with that little capsule house and Son Goku.

It wasn't real hard to work out a rough idea of where they'd gone – they'd gotten Son Goku to take them somewhere off world, in all probability New Namek. That Son ha gone off with the aliens on what she seemed to think was some careless new intergalactic adventure was confirmed for me by Chichi, who seemed more tired than irate over the entire matter. She didn't even throw a frying pan at me when I came asking, even though she's always hated me. That woman is getting old.

The "why?" was a bit more difficult to work out than the "where?" – or at least the "why now?" was.

I cornered Uragiru with my questions about a week after they ran off. She didn't know much more than I did, but seemed to think that she was the one who'd driven them off.

I doubted that – I'm _much_ scary than she could ever be – but she was absurdly pregnant and that made her obnoxiously proud and haughty, completely untouchable. I could see I was beat before I even opened my mouth, so I didn't waste too much time trying to rustle her feathers.

A good month later, Son came back all alone. I didn't bother to ask him what the four of them had been up to in all that time. It couldn't have been anything all that exciting – probably just sitting around on New Namek, making time until the dragon balls there went active again and they could wish back Frigid's ship. Plus, I'd had enough of Son to last me a decade by then.

And anyway, what was any of it to me?

So that was that, just another of those weird episodes that happen here now and again, forgotten almost before it's over with. None of Frigid's group ever returned here, and time just kept on keeping on.

Over the years, I'd spy on Son's folks sometimes, and sometimes I'd drop in on them. Just to waste time, you understand.

Uragiru folded herself into Son's group almost seamlessly, the way people he'd beat always seemed to do, and after a while you'd have thought she'd always been family. Only thing was that sometimes I'd catch her sending murder-looks at Son's back, but she never took anything beyond ugly thoughts.

The kids were part of it, I guess, because they meant that she had something to lose. Shit, I ain't the most sympathetic of people, but even I know that nothing's ever going to be alright after you lose your entire world – all the sensu beans in the world won't heal that type of wound – but the kids seemed to make a difference. Before Yamcha finally up and kicked the bucket, he and Uragiru managed to have half a brigade worth of little brats, each of them with porcelain blue skin and black hair.

Yamcha was the first of the old guard to go, a good twenty years after Frigid's group left, but after that it was like a game of dominoes. My sister's runt husband went, and Chichi, and even old Muten Roshi, who wasn't quite as immortal as everybody thought. When Bulma died Vegeta didn't follow that far behind, so maybe she really was more to him than a place to crash and an easy lay. Gohan followed the old folks decades sooner than he should have, but that's the effects of too much early stress and a desk job for you.

Uragiru outlived Yamcha by good hundred years – her species was longer lived than humans or Saiyajin, I guess – but after a while her great-grand kids put her in the ground. By then the only ones left from the old group were Dende, my sister and me, and Son Goku.

And here's the hell of the thing: Son never seemed to get much older than he'd been on that morning that Frigid's ship arrived. It was infuriating.

I called him out on that one time, accused him of using the dragon balls to make himself immortal.

Son turned fussy at the accusation, told me that he didn't have an answer for it either. "But maybe," he said, wagging a finger speculatively, "when that old Kai said that he didn't mind giving me this life since there were only a few thousand years left t' it, he really meant that."

I can't really tell how much Son misses his old friends and family members. He cried at all the funerals, before eating himself sick – which for Son was quite the feat – but his attachments have never been entirely human, anymore than he is himself, and people seem to fade out of his life without too much of a production. It's not really indifference or a lack of affection, I don't think, or even a failure of memory. It's just the way he is, and that may or may not have something to do with being a Saiyajin.

"But I hope that ain't the case," he went on, and now he was close to whining. "I don't mean to hang around here forever. All the really strong guys are in the Underworld, and I wanna go and fight them."

I ignored most of that. "You're shitting me," I said to him. "A 'few thousand years?'" I repeated, outraged. By then, you know, I'd been waiting about a hundred an fifty years more than I ought to have had to for him to die.

"What'd you care what I do, Juunanagou?" he asked me, peeved.

Well, what could I say to that? It wasn't like I was going to tell him the truth or anything, when someone with half a brain should have been able to figure it out for himself.

I was _made_ to kill Son Goku, and that's something that's programed into me the same way a bird's instincts tell it fly south, but I haven't done it yet. I've never gotten found a situation where I could best him, and though I keep on waiting.

That's how I'm different from my future self, the one future Trunks killed, you see? Son was dead for him before he even had a chance to kill him, and that took his purpose away, and he went crazy. The me from that time-line is a million times worse then I am, and it's got to be because Son wasn't there for him. He never would have had the option of following through or going against his programing.

And what does that all say about me? About who I am and what I'm capable of an how much control, really, I have over any of it, and I can't know the answer to any of this as long as Son is still around. As long as Son's around, I don't know what I am.

So I'm waiting. It looks like I'm going to be waiting for a while still, because Son Goku isn't going anywhere.

**END. **


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